Adele Grodstein Still Life Paintings

My name is Adele Grodstein.When I was nine I painted an oil portrait of my little sister who was willing to sit for a short while. Getting anyone or anything to be still long enough for a ‘portrait’ is a big problem. People twitch, scratch, shift in their chair. Bugs crawl down the wall. The sunlight on the jar deepens with the afternoon. And flowers will, of course, fade. All of this natural progression has become less challenge than opportunity for me. I try to capture these slices of time so they coalesce in my painting. Movement will always be there: the struggle to keep everything in position for the brushstroke balances the certainty that when I look up again, the whole view will have changed slightly. My hope is that this amalgam of movements results in a fluid and spontaneous vision of my subject.

I continue to study my craft and explore many themes in different media, including oil and watercolor, stone and clay. My body of work mainly comprises of interior study, plein air landscape, figure study and still life. However, I do still paint portraits and my subjects continue to squirm a bit, bless their hearts.