BIO: Anita Trombetta is a Brooklyn-based artist. She received her BFA from SUNY New Paltz in 2011. She shows throughout New York City and is an active member of Arts Gowanus. She is the co-director of Meeting House, an annual mini-residency program and curatorial program. This series of still lives was created in response to the 2020 lockdown in New York City. 

STATEMENT: Since the pandemic began, I moved my studio into my Brooklyn apartment. I set up these still lives in my home studio and have limited space and reference material. I give the maximum amount of time to the work, within the time span of organic material’s life. Cut flowers wilt and avocados brown. Domesticity, while providing comfort and nourishment, looms with decay. Meanwhile, my house plants continue to be overgrown and wild, despite a global pandemic going on outside the walls of my home. 

While I am depicting living, growing, and decaying things, I also grow the form of the surface organically. I extend the frame of the rectangle by adding another piece of paper to expose distant spaces beyond the picture plane. Moments of these painting collages become very abstract. My palette is intensely saturated and high-key, further alienating the subject away from the natural world. I draw these inanimate objects expressively, often with human characteristics. Within the composition, there are deep crevices of space for the eye to rest. A plastic container squirms out of itself, and a flower coyishly flirts. Through observation of everyday objects, I examine my body, both as the consumer and consumed.”