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While rooted in tradition, still life has evolved to embrace contemporary themes and perspectives and continues to prove its relevance in an ever-changing art world. From flowers to fabrics and pomegranates, decoding the symbols in still life paintings can reveal a hidden world of deeper meaning.
Be it Rachel Ruysch (Dutch golden age) or Vanessa Bell (twentieth-century modernism), regardless of the period, female artists have had a long association with the genre. Pressured to stay within the domestic sphere by a patriarchal society, women’s proficiency with still life painting was in part a result of their oppression. However, it also allowed them to express the materiality of their daily lives and offered up histories of women’s lives compiled by way of the objects that bore witness to those lives.
Jennifer Trouton’s practice incorporates paint, embroidery, wallpaper, textiles and artefacts. She appropriates the tropes of still life painting to create contemporary coded dramas that subtly express ideas around gender, class and identity within Irish History.
Jennifer will give a gallery tour of her exhibition In Plain Sight and discuss her use of symbolism, wallpaper and fabric in the production of her work.
Participants will be invited to compose and paint a still life from artefacts and materials featured in the exhibition. Jennifer will demonstrate her process of working on paper mounted on board. She will be available throughout to give individual advice on techniques and practical assistance.
Artist Bio:
Born 1971 in Co. Armagh, Jennifer Trouton is a Belfast based artist. Since graduating from the University of Ulster in the mid-nineties, her work has been extensively exhibited both nationally and internationally. Throughout her career, Trouton’s work has garnered numerous accolades, including the Golden Fleece Award, the Claremorris Open (COE), the RHA Keating/McLaughlin Award and the RUA Drawing and Watercolour Prize. In 2022, she received the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s highest accolade, the Major Individual Artist Award and in 2024 received an Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award.
Trouton’s work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Irish State collection, The Ulster Museum, ESB Ireland, The Office of Public Works, University of Ulster, Queen’s University, Belfast and the David Roberts Foundation, London.
Image courtesy of the artist: Jennifer Trouton, Last Supper :Original Sin (detail) 2023, Oil on linen, 182 x 152 cm, Photography Simon Mills, Image courtesy of the artist.
