One, still life with orchid.

As I'm sure is true for many of you.

My first encounter with Claudio Ateano's art was with this painting.

I saw it featured in a magazine that had been discarded in a cafe, and I was immediately

struck by the balance of colour and light.

The brightness of the pink orchid set against the withered darkness of its dying leaves

suggests a tight anger, restrained under the illusion of cheer and tranquility.

I talked with Ateano about this painting only once, shortly after we met a little over

a year ago.

She was, and still is, reluctant to discuss her work.

But this, as her first well-known work, seemed to fill her with a particular eye.

Perhaps she had simply been asked about it too often.

She felt it was often misinterpreted.

That the decay creeping along the underside of the oranges symbolised the unavoidable presence

of death.

Not an unexpected interpretation to be fair, but not what she had seen or planned when

she made the painting.

Ateano was thinking about the endless cycles all living things traverse, the mobious strip

of existence, the phases we see and those we never can.

To her the painting was always about what is unknowable rather than what is unavoidable.

Closely at the oranges below the flower, what do you see?

Is death present and unavoidable?

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