Winter Pansies, 2006
Oil on Board. 30.5x30.5cm
Still Life with Bread and Tomatoes, 2008
Oil on Board, 36x30.5
Anne Songhurst's luscious oil-on-board still lives are beautiful homages to genuine maturity. The Ashford-based artist was born in 1946 and her technique demonstrates her years of serious dedication to mastering her medium. Songhurst is one of a few self-taught artists whose work clearly benefited from being untouched by art school training, in which contemporary art schools tend to teach artists how to think rather than how to paint. Songhurst's lovely, lush images carry within themselves and beautifully present all the connotations associated with the still-life tradition that she follows.
Like the works by the Dutch and Flemish masters whom she emulates, Songhurst's bowls of vibrant fruit are full of life, and therefore paradoxically allude to the inevitability of decay and death. However, the meaning of her images is far less significant than their gorgeous execution. Songhurst uses fabric and reflective surfaces to great effect. She creates dynamic compositions filled but not overwhelmed by texture, light, colour and depth. She also moves past mere representation by slightly distorting her forms' proportions and perspective, creating charming and sensual images where loaves of bread, silk, wicker, sterling silver and fruit gracefully flow together. Songhurst's paintings might not make statements but they do provide real pleasure. Her images are timeless and her talent is a pleasing counterpoint to today's youth-crazed art world.
To see more of her work registered on Saatchi Online click here.
Ana Finel Honigman
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