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Out of Darkness · 2024
Still Life at Night
Painted over. It became Rajasthani Ghagra
The objects after dark — the still life that has stopped being lit from outside and started being illuminated from its own dark ground.
This canvas no longer exists in this form.
In August 2026 Still Life at Night was painted over and became Rajasthani Ghagra, six feet of colour turning around a still centre. The objects are gone. The night is still down there — visible in the deep navy at the lower right, and in the red verticals near the top that were once bottles.
This page remains as the record of what is underneath.
“Still Life at Night' balances chaos and clarity, each stroke a step through abstraction’s wild terrain.”
Still Life at Night (2024) is a painting of silence — of shapes that no longer shout, but remain. At 48 x 48 inches, this acrylic painting from the Black and White Collection renders the classic still life genre in absence, shadow, and tone.
Objects are only barely suggested — a curve that could be a vase, a vertical stack hinting at books or boxes. The painting is layered in deep blacks and midnight grays, with soft edges glowing in thin white lines, like moonlight barely tracing their contours. What’s present is the mood: quiet, slow, watchful.
I painted Still Life at Night in low light, letting my eyes guide me more by intuition than sight. It was about capturing what things feel like when you can’t fully see them — when presence is sensed, not studied.
This work reflects the tonal restraint of Giorgio Morandi, but filtered through the noir abstraction of Mark Tobey. It’s not about the things. It’s about what lingers when they’re left alone.
Still Life at Night isn’t about objects. It’s about pause — the kind you find in darkened rooms and quiet hearts.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 8 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 9 ft or more
- Light
- Low ambient light amplifies luminous passages — dark-wall installation ideal
- Daylight
- Lampblack, charcoal and shadowed umber will not shift with the hour, but a dark, low-contrast surface like this flattens in direct sun. Keep it off the window's path and let raking lamplight find its texture.
Lives best in
Bedroom 5/5
The shadowed umber passages and near-total absence of color range make this painting behave like the room itself at 2 a.m., present and undemanding, which is exactly what a bedroom wall should offer.
Hotel lobby 5/5
At 4 by 6 feet of charcoal and shadow, this work commands a lobby wall the way a held breath commands a room, drawing arrivals into a pause before the business of the place begins.
Details
- Size
- 4 × 6 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Year
- 2024
- Collection
- Out of Darkness
- Palette
- Lampblack · Charcoal Gray · Shadowed Umber
- Weight
- About 45 lb
- Painted over
- It became Rajasthani Ghagra
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Wing
- Texture4
- Form2
- Colour range2
- Palette4.7
- Contrast2
- Abstraction Quotient2
