Still life painting with pears, apples, oranges and grapes. by Galerie Ringoot

Still life with pears, apples, oranges and grapes on a blue background and an orange background. Oil on canvas by Pieter Ringoot. (1921 - 2011)

Presumably painted in the artist's studio in Lebbeke. (East Flanders - Belgium)

A still life is an artistic composition of motionless or inanimate objects, carefully exposed. Painting a still life allows a painter to concentrate on the composition and on the use of color and tonal value, the smooth distinction in color nuances between the lightest and darkest part.

As an academic painter, Pieter Ringoot's oeuvre includes several such works. Pieter was not one to improvise. He did not stand in front of his canvas to paint; just like that. When he started painting he was prepared, he knew what he was going to paint and how he was going to paint it. Then he had made the necessary preliminary studies of his subject.

Pieter knew his work through and through. With him a work was not a coincidence but one could almost say the birth of a full-term pregnancy. He was also someone who did not make things easy for himself and was very rarely, not to say never, satisfied with his work. He dared to leave work of hours, sometimes of days undone.