Unlock the intricacy and real magic of Caryn Scrimgeour’s The Imprecision of Feeling, a mesmerising series of works currently on show at Everard Read in Rosebank. Viewers are invited to stand in front of one of her paintings and really look. Go away and come back and look again.
Caryn Scrimgeour unravel the lives of people through objects
Each viewing of her luxurious, luminous tablescapes is bound to reveal something new. A beetle in a matchbox you didn’t notice the first time, a cocktail umbrella, the fine marks that turn tubes of paint into metres of rich chinoiserie textile. These technically brilliant works are painterly treasure troves.
They’re also, not as one might assume, created by rendering a setup scene of a table. Rather Caryn Scrimgeour conjures her work instinctively, adding and subtracting images and elements as she goes in the exacting process for this art exhibition in Johannesburg. ‘Just like poems, where one line follows on for the next, my works unfold as a layering of ideas’, says the artist. ‘They are a riddle and I need to answer the questions’, she adds.
Caryn Scrimgeour is an artist taken with what unfolds around a table. ‘They are spaces where everything happens’, she explains. It’s the combination of people – witnessing their lives and events, that is compelling. She stores and holds people’s memories and paints things that have meaning and are treasured.
But just whose tables are these? That is also part of the puzzle that begs to be solved. Who has just stepped out of the shot, and got up from their chair, leaving Scrimgeour to detail these vignettes of life’s little details? ‘Everyone’s interpretation is different, the viewer must unravel their meaning, not mine’, answers Scrimgeour with a smile – inviting you to step closer and decide for yourself.
The exhibition closes on 22 December 2023.
Cost: FREE entry
When: Running until 22 December 2023. Mon to Fri, 9am to 6pm. Sat, 9am to 1pm
Where: 6 Jellicoe Ave, Rosebank, Johannesburg
Email: [email protected]
Website: everard-read.co.za
Instagram: @everard_read_johannesburg
Facebook: @EverardRead
