The artwork “Peaches” by Janet Fish, created in 1971, is an exemplar of Contemporary Realism and belongs to the still life genre. It reflects the artist’s fascination with the portrayal of light and its effects on surfaces through the medium of painting.
The artwork presents a highly detailed depiction of a group of peaches. These fruits reside within a transparent plastic package, which is itself placed atop what appears to be a pale blue surface, perhaps a table or counter. The peaches are rendered with meticulous attention to the soft gradients of color and reflection that characterize their round, juicy forms. Each peach appears to gleam with a lifelike luster, indicative of their ripeness and succulence.
The plastic wrapping adds an additional layer of complexity to the piece, both visually and in theme, showcasing the play of light as it interacts with the transparent material and creates subtle distortions and reflections. A price sticker affixed to the plastic provides a sense of the mundane, everyday context of the subject matter, grounding the work in reality rather than the idyllic or the abstract.
Fish’s choice of subject and her close inspection of the interplay between light, color, and texture highlight the dynamic qualities of commonplace objects in our lives, encouraging viewers to pause and reconsider the beauty found in the ordinary.
