Nature Morte No. 1 (Bowl of Peaches)

Based in Detroit, Michigan, artist Cynthia Greig works with a unique process combining photography, drawing, and painting to challenge the well-worn concept of photographic truth and its correspondence to perceived reality.

In Nature Morte, Greig depicts the passage of time as she explores 16th-century vanitas themes of death, decay, and transience. Applying her signature style to both natural and plastic fruit, she stages stark arrangements waiting to photograph them until signs of decay have begun to appear. Muted color emanates from beneath the alabaster surface of peaches and pears while drawn shadows and charcoal lines fix moments in fictional time.

In Representations, the artist pays a playful homage to 19th century British photographer William Henry Fox Talbot and his treatise “The Pencil of Nature.” Using photography to document household items, actual objects are whitewashed and drawn directly on their surfaces with charcoal before being shot with color negative film and printed in the darkroom. Resulting images transform once-familiar physicality into visual hybrids that appear more like simple line drawings, shifting the viewer’s perception between the familiar and the strange.

SHOWS