Jeanne Anderton

Jeanne Anderton’s visually rich photographs offer remarkably contemporary reinterpretations of Baroque and Renaissance still lifes. The Maryland-based artist and art professor prints each lush digital image onto a canvas, then applies a coating by brush, further blurring the distinction between stylized photography and photorealistic painting. The glistening surfaces of every deep, exquisitely colorful object and setting are incredibly sensual and evocative, immediately conjuring the flavors, textures and odors of the various foods and fabrics pictured. Anderton is interested not only in the immense aesthetic appeals of previous periods’ imagery; many of the compositions incorporate modern figures into otherwise classical arrangements.

She taps into the art historical symbolism of past periods while supplying her own contemporary lexicon. In some pieces we see part of a human figure performing a kind of self-surgery in sharp, lurid detail. Elsewhere plastic toys and kitschy statuettes introduce elements of literal and figurative play that subvert historical subjects and proportions. Anderton photographs superbly dynamic still lifes.