Rafael Wardi : Still-Life

It reminds me of a harbor, like when you look at the left side of the painting to the bottom, there is something shaped like a ship. I feel like there’s lot of people, it’s so crowded. And they are kind of in hurry. I say that because there are so many colors. It feels like when you go to check out your eyes. When you go to the control and they put something in your eyes, you can’t see, it so blur. So it gives me the same feeling.

I can see a table covered with food and fruit. I see vases of flowers. Where you saw a boat I see a bowl of fruit. I think it’s some kind of an Easter table, maybe because there is a white bunny over there and yellow is connected to Easter in Finland.

First I interpreted it like something that you see from the top of very high building, so I saw it as a busy city. Although the general impression of this painting is very bright I didn’t feel it very positive. I didn’t feel it as a happy picture. This painter put a lot of effort in combining colors that doesn’t necessarily match. Although it’s very bright I feel it’s very neutral. It could be a portrayal of a busy city and you’re seeing it from top floor of skyscraper. It’s blurry to you, the details are not so seen, but you get the general impression that it is very busy and very hectic.

It reminds me of a breakfast buffet in a hotel in Mexico. The colors are so bright and I see bowls of tropical fruit. It’s also quite blurry which illustrate the chaos when tourists are filling their plates.

I also see the fruits and the flowers there but I also see there’s a party going on. And maybe that’s why it’s little bit blurry, because there’s movement. And there I see three guys who don’t like this party and that is why they are like dark. [on top, left corner]

I see that as an invitation card to a birthday party, because I see number five in red color. [on the right middle]

I just asked if this is what you call impressionism, it’s like this artistic style where it is really unclear and I guess it like allows you to do things you wouldn’t do, like in photorealistic things. You have this explosion of colors that doesn’t necessarily have to be realistic. It does look very messy, but I think it makes it more interesting as well. I think it’s hard to compete after photography came out. You had to like experiment with painting in different styles, like things you can’t do with photography, I think this is an example of that, seeing the world through different lenses. I think it might just be a stylistic choice of the artist. I think it could be hard to capture the same feeling of like warmth and happiness in photograph of an Easter table. I feel all warm looking at this because of the colors.