Sydney Licht

"Still Life with Oranges in Pot" 2025 Oil on Linen

2025

Remnants of our consumer culture keep finding their way into my work. Our visual lives are cluttered with packages, clothing and furnishings that come at us in a swirl of color and p...

"I make quiet paintings in a noisy world. My work is an intimate meditation on humble objects and the detritus of studio life. I aim to promote a reengagement with the mundane while ...

Painted in a traditional style with numerous glazes in oil, this painting is vibrant and colorful. The sides of the slim canvas have been painted. :: Painting :: Realism :: This pie...

My paintings begin with a serious sense of play, both in the staging and the creating of the compositions. It is at this beginning stage that I operate under the Dadaist dictate that “anything can be art”, and at the same time I seek out a balanced and harmonious composition by way of line, shape, and color. I work according to my whimsy, sometimes seeking to assert some form of narrative however personal or ambiguous, and other times I am simply satisfied with the hint of a human presence. Once I have my compositions the paintings then very quickly become about work, a very labor intensive work that forces me to focus my mind and slow things down (which I feel is relevant especially in this day and age of high-speed everything). A great amount of effort is spent on trying to get to the highest level of finish that is possible according to my current skill level. For inspiration I have drawn from the past four centuries of object specific paintings, from the ontbijtjes (laid tables) of the 17th Century Dutch masters such as Willem Kalf, Jan Davidsz de Heem, Abraham van Beijeren...