Collection: Brenda Garrett

Artist Statement:

While I enjoy landscape and portrait photography, I am drawn to still life and the way it slows and expands our perception of everyday objects.

My still lifes are inspired by the still life paintings of the late Renaissance: their contemplative mood, earth and jewel tones, play of light across textures and surfaces, and the absent but ever present humanity - all underscored by shadowy backgrounds.

Like the Renaissance painters, my art begins with the arrangement: the juxtaposition and sometimes piling up of everyday objects to create a composition of colors, shapes, textures and surfaces. Then, I begin taking high resolution photographs, refining the arrangement as I work and most often using light from a near by window to emulate the painterly raking northern light.

While the camera is the perfect tool to capture light, color and detail, I digitally remaster the images to enhance the photograph's mood and add elements of humanity to the photograph's stark realism. Again, I refine as I go, letting the subject matter influence the techniques. Wile my images most often take on the qualities the Renaissance still lifes that inspired me, they can also have the quality of watercolors, pencil sketches, or anything in between.

This is what I love about doing still life photography - the absolute control over the subject combined with the freedom to change and manipulate the image, to try new techniques and grow as an artist.

I have always been a hobby photographer and have photographs of still lifes I took with my first camera when I was 14 years old. Before the pandemic, I was a food blogger. My bi-weekly recipe posts required plenty of still life photographs of food, and I soon realized I enjoyed the photography more than creating the recipes. During the Pandemic, I upgraded my equipment and refined my skills by taking courses on light, composition, digital remastering. I then moved to Northern California for two years, where I developed a portfolio and displayed works in the Kennedy Gallery in Sacramento. I have had commercial commissions and also enjoy doing what I call house portraits: remastered images of peoples homes.