The works I present on this site form part of my ongoing pursuit and focus on the subject of still life. They are oil paintings and prints I have executed over the last ten years, both here in Mexico and in New York. I choose to exhibit them online well aware of the limitations of electronic media, which cannot supplant the one-to-one experience and immediacy before an actual work. Having said that, I hope that this site will bring the viewer closer to my work and intentions and, in general, to still life painting as a genre.

The works I present here emerged from my attempt to depict and give permanence to things in the world around me, mostly common everyday objects, fruit or food stuff arranged or found in such a way as to become the impetus for the making of a picture. In some instances, the pictorial arrangement was triggered by formal concerns rather than subject matter; in these works, the subject becomes subordinate to an underlying structure or concept about space, color or form. On other occassions, the motivations for a work were purely experiential and arose from chance encounters with the reality around me. These works are somewhat more spontaneous in nature. Another type of still life I have painted deals more with memory and there, I have tried to capture fleeting sensations or memories through the use of light, color, subject matter and context. This latter approach contains more of a narrative, though unintentional. My interest there was to make more tangible or concrete an emotion or sensation that was fleeting or ephemeral. What remains constant, I believe, in all of the works is the point of departure; this is usually reality.

I have found that still life opens up the possibilities for infinite arrangement, selection and manipulation of both the reality at hand and the formal elements of painting; color, line, tone, composition and design come first. It is the most abstract form of realism one can practice, at once formal while at the same time firmly anchored to reality. This apparent ambivalence or duality found in still life bridges the gap between traditional illusionistic space and flat modern abstract space. This is one of the legacies of cubist painting (more than half are still lifes) and earlier, Cezanne's tabletop still lifes. In this sense still life painting is the quintessential modernist genre, free from narrative and linked to reality by way of form. It has come to represent in my experience the essence of what paintings communicate: that which is still, visual and silent, an echo of our existance, the trace of our passing.

Edgar Soberón

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico