Lockdown Still Lifes
2020 - 2022 

Produced between 2020 and 2022, this series of oil paintings and instant film photographs emerged from the quiet confinement of Melbourne’s extended pandemic lockdowns. With access to live models or travel restricted, I, like Gustave Courbet during his imprisonment in 1871, turned inward—drawing inspiration from the objects immediately around me. Just as Courbet painted still lifes of fish, fruit, and flowers sent to him by his sister, I composed scenes using items at hand: fresh flowers from the garden, wine, lingerie, tarot cards, and jewellery—small luxuries that offered comfort, sensuality, and symbolism during a time of isolation.

The still life genre became a vessel through which I explored themes of femininity, domesticity, and memory. Arranged against dark, minimal backgrounds that reflect the interior solitude of lockdown, these compositions blur the lines between the private and the performative, the everyday and the ornate. Instant film photographs, both embedded in the paintings and presented on their own, underscore a fascination with the fleeting moment and with how we record and recall time spent in seclusion.

The inclusion of tarot cards gestures toward a deeper search for meaning, self-determination, and agency in uncertain times—disrupting passivity and offering alternative narratives beyond confinement. What began as a limitation became a meditation on beauty, longing, and the roles objects play in shaping identity