Lydia's Kettle

Thanks so much John, for your critique! I am honored by your words. I especially love "...it is mundane to the point of surreal." I really wasn't sure this was working so I had a jaw-dropping moment upon reading this.

Judith Skillman’s Lydia's Kettle is, without doubt, a still life, but, like all great still lifes, it is open to endless interpretations. For me, the rustic simplicity of its surroundings and composition is full of doubts, questions, and intrigue. It belongs (again, for me, not for everyone) in the realm of dreams and not reality. It is mundane to the point of surreal. The quotidian (like all things) becomes fantastical when pushed to an extreme. If other human adornments were present in the current work, I would be fooled into believing I was gazing upon a simple everyday scene. However, the sparsity of its environment brings me back to half-forgotten fragments of disconcertingly simple dreams. An extended focus on a familiar object is more jarring and unearthly than most panoplies of fantastic events. Lydia's Kettle is the kind of dream that a million people could have, but none experience in a similar fashion; ambiguity and mystery personified.