Study Pomegranate, 2013, Dean Home
Ink and watercolour on paper, 173cm x 342cm
Provenance: Metro Gallery, Melbourne.
Dean Home is arguably becoming one of Australia’s most sought after artists. Home has created a luscious body of work here that makes manifest his creative obsession with the exotic and the oriental. The velvety richness of these paintings immediately invites comparisons to the masters of 17th century still life. (1)
In 2001, Home’s attention turned to the Still Life genre. The artist says “I picked up some Chinese porcelain bowls at auction, including one from the Kangxi period” (1662-1772). These objects opened up a new direction for Home’s work. He has relentlessly perfected his technique combining his gift for colour with carefully considered composition. Home plays with the Still Life genre; even though figures are no longer the explicit focus of his work he incorporates them through the characters that decorate the fabric and bowls. Employing the motifs and symbols in an ever-evolving set of fables and parables.Home has an obsessive attention to detail. Curating the objects, perfecting the angle of light and photographing each scene up to 200 times as if sketches for his large painterly works. However, this process does not exclude the opportunity for improvisation. Home says he’ll often come across a flower or fruit and add it in to the composition on a whim. (2)