For me a still-life painting is about the nexus between painting and visual perception. I think of the still life studio as a kind of laboratory where I can consider this relationship under quiet and relatively consistent conditions.

I experience painting as an extremely refined sensual practice that is ideally suited to examining the haptic aspects of visual experience: what it feels like to see. I am always astonished to find that something of this can be communicated in paint, but it is also my experience that such subtle communications are more likely to succeed when the habitual expectations and associations that attach to painted images (such as narratives and symbols) can be neutralised.

As I am painting a still life I watch my attention as it moves between two poles: the configuration of objects on a table and the manipulation of pigment on canvas. Artists’ priorities vary as to where the weight of their attention falls along this continuum, and these priorities are reflected in their finished works. The communication of this ‘play’ between image and object, between illusion and material, is a primary delight of painting, both in terms of its making and its enjoyment.

—Jude Rae

excerpt from Jude Rae, ‘Ordinary beauty’ in Cressida Campbell, exh. cat., National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, curated by Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax, 2022, p. 111