This small oil painting forms part of The Pantry collection, which explores the vivid presence and quiet symbolism of everyday food objects. At its centre, two red chillies lie intertwined on a warm wooden surface, their forms rendered with heightened attention to colour, texture, and light.
Their glossy skins glow in shifting tones of crimson and scarlet, catching light in sharp, energetic highlights that contrast with the deep, dark background. Subtle surface variations, the slight wrinkling of skin, the curve of stem and tapering form, add a sense of organic movement, as though the chillies are still warming the space around them. Painted in oil at an intimate 15 x 15 cm scale and finished with genuine copper leaf edges, the work intensifies the heat and vitality of its subject through both colour and composition.
In Red Hot!, still life becomes charged with energy and immediacy. The chillies are not passive objects but active presences, bold, intertwined, and alive with visual heat. The painting becomes a study in intensity and sensation, where colour itself carries the language of spice, vitality, and sensation.
Unframed: 15 x 15 cm | 5.90 x 5.90 inches.
Medium: oil on canvas.
Finishing: the artwork comes ready to hang, and is finished with genuine copper leaf around the side edges.
