Maggie Greer - Still Life with Flowers and Objects

Maggie Greer - Still Life with Flowers and Objects

A large and richly worked oil on canvas by the Scottish artist Maggie Greer, depicting an abundant tabletop arrangement of flowers, plants, vessels and everyday objects. Signed Maggie Greer in pencil to the reverse and probably dating from around the early 1980s, a period in which Greer is known to have been actively exhibiting in Scotland.

Rather than presenting a conventional formal still life, Greer fills the composition with the accumulated objects of a working domestic or studio interior. A dark pedestal vessel and shallow bowl dominate the centre, surrounded by a vivid blue mug, small bottle, boxes, cut flowers and plant material. At the upper right, a terracotta-red pot sits beneath broad, monstera-like foliage.

Purple, white and pale pink flowers are scattered across the tabletop, some appearing freshly cut and others fallen or wilting, giving the arrangement an informal, lived-in quality. The effect is less that of a carefully staged bouquet than a table upon which somebody has been handling, arranging and working with plants.

The steeply tilted tabletop is particularly striking. Greer allows the viewer to look simultaneously across and down onto the objects, flattening conventional perspective so that individual elements remain visible despite the density of the arrangement. The approach has parallels with the distinctive tradition of 20th-century Scottish still-life painting, in which artists such as Anne Redpath and Elizabeth Blackadder similarly explored tipped perspectives, domestic objects and flowers, although Greer's treatment is notably more crowded and expressionistic.

Colour provides much of the structure. The brilliant turquoise-green tabletop forms a broad field across the centre of the painting, punctuated by the cobalt-blue mug and flashes of crimson, terracotta, magenta and purple. These intense colours are balanced by the subdued olive, cream and brown tones of the upper background and the deep, almost black-brown foreground.

Greer's handling of oil is free and varied. Areas of thin, translucent paint and softly scrubbed colour are combined with strongly drawn linear passages, particularly around the plants and the red lattice-like structure within the central bowl. The result has something of the immediacy of watercolour or mixed media, both mediums with which Greer is also known to have worked.

Maggie Greer was active within the Scottish art world by at least the early 1980s. Surviving works include landscapes, flower paintings, figure studies and more experimental compositions, with a number dated 1981. In March 1983 she exhibited at the Abacus Gallery in Edinburgh, an exhibition reviewed by the critic Clare Henry for The Glasgow Herald. Other surviving works have retained labels from the Atholl Gallery in Dunkeld, indicating representation through Scottish commercial galleries.

Despite this documented exhibition history, comparatively little biographical information about Greer has entered standard artist reference works, and her paintings remain relatively uncommon on the secondary market. Large oils such as the present work appear particularly unusual among the surviving examples, which more frequently include watercolour and mixed-media compositions.

Presented in a narrow wood frame.

A particularly substantial and visually distinctive Scottish still life, combining flowers, plants and everyday studio objects with boldly tilted perspective, saturated colour and loose, expressive handling.

Artist: Maggie Greer
Title: Still Life with Flowers and Objects
Date: Circa early 1980s
Medium: Oil on canvas
Signed: Signed Maggie Greer in pencil to the reverse
Framed size: 84cm x 95cm
Condition: Good vintage condition overall, with some minor age-related surface wear and marks consistent with age. The narrow wooden frame also shows light surface wear. There are some small areas of paint loss and damage near the frame but nothing that significantly detracts from the impact of the painting.