Craig Stephens's flirts with reality

I did many visits to Graig Stephens's blog and chose these painting. I'm not happy because it would take some more pictures to show Craig's world. Yes, it is realism but there is something about these paintings that is saying the opposite as if laughing and provoking: "realistic, me?". The backgrounds have the same atmosphere and even thou they aspire neutrality they add a magical touch to these objects.

Craig wrote about the right bottom painting:

"I had a lot of fun painting this one. Reflective and transparent surfaces are endlessly fascinating to me."

We can see a lot of realistic painted materials at his work: glasses, fabrics, fruit's peels, plastic, rubber, paper, wood, but these objects that are often on a surface we don't recognize, not a table or any furniture we can name, are not that realistic and this is one of the mysteries and uniqueness about Graig's art that makes it a little difficult to classify it as still-life.