"I encountered my first still-life works during museum visits as a teenager—no doubt a Dutch master or two—and I think my mother had some simple prints at home. But I probably didn’t begin to engage with that genre (considered the lowest within the art world’s hierarchy) seriously until I was at university studying art history. There, I was in a position where I could scratch beneath the surface of art. Still-life pictures were no longer just pretty; they could have intent. Certain profound concepts were commonplace in the genre—the depiction of life, death, and the passage of time, for example.

Objects themselves can have meaning; they can hold secrets. I think the never-ending depth of possibilities for symbology and meaning within a still-life work is captivating." — Charles Moriarty