Still life painting has occupied artists for more than four centuries, yet it remains fertile ground for experimentation, with flowers, fruit and familiar objects continuing to produce remarkably different results. From David Hockney and Jonas Wood to Cooper, Nicolas Party, Zhou Song and Moritz Moll, discover six contemporary still life artists finding new possibilities in one of painting’s oldest and most recognisable genres.
What can a bunch of flowers or a bowl of fruit tell us about the way we see the world? Quite a lot, if four centuries of still life painting are anything to go by. From the meticulously observed flowers of the Dutch Golden Age to David Hockney’s iPad drawings, generations of artists have looked to the objects around them for subjects, returning to flowers, fruit, vessels and possessions in endlessly different ways.
Today’s still life artists are working with subjects that have been painted thousands of times before, as well as centuries of ideas about colour, composition, perspective and abstraction. In this guide, we explore how that tradition evolved before turning to six modern still life artists to discover what each brings to one of art’s longest-established genres.
What Defines the Still Life Painting Genre?
A still life painting places inanimate objects at the centre of an artwork. Flowers and fruit are perhaps the genre’s best-known subjects, but artists have painted everything from books, food and glassware to ceramics, musical instruments and personal possessions. A painting doesn’t become a still life simply because these things appear in it; they need to be the subject, or an important part of what the artist wants us to consider.
The way artists present those objects has changed enormously. In a Contemporary still life, they might be distorted or abstracted, shown within a wider interior or landscape, or assembled from photographs, memory and different viewpoints. The setting and techniques may change, but the objects themselves remain fundamental to the work.
Familiar subjects also give still life painters considerable freedom. Because we already know what a flower, vase or piece of fruit looks like, an artist can distort, simplify or abstract it and still rely on the viewer to recognise what they are seeing.
David Hockney, Lillies, from Europäische Graphik No VII (1971)
Four Centuries of the Still Life, and Why Painters Keep Returning to It
Still life began to emerge as a genre in its own right in the late 16th century, particularly in the region we now know as Belgium and the Netherlands. Objects that had once played supporting roles in larger paintings were suddenly given the whole canvas, flowers, fruit, food, glassware and precious vessels became worthy subjects in themselves, and still life artists seized the opportunity to show what they could do, capturing everything from the bloom on a grape to reflections on silver and glass.
There was often much more going on than a simple display of technical skill. A lavish spread could speak of wealth and expanding global trade, while an hourglass, fading flower or piece of overripe fruit might remind its owner that earthly pleasures do not last. By the 17th century, still life painting was flourishing in both the Dutch Republic to the north and Flanders to the south, and continued to do so into the early 18th century. Willem Kalf’s Still Life with a Silver Ewer (1655–60) and Rachel Ruysch’s Flowers in a Glass Vase (1704) are among the most famous still life paintings associated with this period.
As still life painting spread across Europe, its familiar subjects became a testing ground for very different artistic ideas. In 18th-century France, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin turned his attention to ordinary domestic objects, from kitchen utensils and crockery to food and simple household possessions. A century later, Paul Cézanne used tables laden with apples, bottles and cloths to challenge conventional perspective, becoming instrumental in the development of modern still life painting.
In the early 20th century, Georges Braque took that experimentation much further through Cubism, fragmenting familiar objects and depicting them from multiple viewpoints, while Henri Matisse used intense colour, pattern and flattened space, helping to open new possibilities for abstract still life. Giorgio Morandi pursued a quieter form of experimentation, repeatedly rearranging the same bottles, vases and boxes in his Bologna studio to explore the relationships between them.
By the time we reach the Contemporary still life artists, the genre has already absorbed centuries of experimentation. Flowers, fruit, vessels and domestic objects are still very much present, but the ways in which artists interpret them have multiplied enormously.
EXPLORE OUR STILL LIFE ART COLLECTION
|
COLLECTOR INSIGHT: STILL LIFE IN ART HISTORY – AT A GLANCE
|
Six Painters, Six Approaches: The Modern Still Life Artists at Maddox Gallery
The six still life artists profiled below span different generations, styles and approaches to painting. What they share is an engagement with a genre that has been continually reinvented for centuries, and a determination to make its familiar subjects their own.
David Hockney Still Life: Colour as an Act of Looking
David Hockney, The First One (2021)
For the late David Hockney, still life painting was bound up with a much larger question: how do we translate the experience of looking into a picture? Through more than seven decades, he experimented with photography, painting, drawing and digital technology in pursuit of different ways of representing what the eye sees. A vase of flowers may be a far more intimate subject than a Californian swimming pool or a Normandy landscape, but for him it presented the same challenge.
“Each time I do a still life, I get very excited and realise that there are a thousand things here I can see! Which of them shall I choose?” Hockney told Martin Gayford in the book Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. “The more I look and think about it, the more I see.”
EXPLORE DAVID HOCKNEY ART FOR SALE
That intensity of observation runs through Hockney’s still life with flowers, particularly the series of 20 iPad drawings he created in Normandy in 2021. Returning to flowers arranged in vases on a table, he worked repeatedly from the same position, changing the blooms, vessels and tablecloths from one composition to the next. Tulips, gladioli, sunflowers and other varieties appear against gingham tablecloths and dark burgundy walls, giving Hockney a familiar setting in which to explore each new arrangement.
The iPad gave Hockney a new means of pursuing an old fascination. He embraced the ability to move quickly between detail and the complete composition, but never regarded digital drawing as separate from traditional art-making, describing the technology as possessing the same “magic” as pencils, pens and brushes. Within the repeated format of the ‘20 Flowers’ series, the individual still life prints could look markedly different. 16th March 2021, Tulips in a Cut Glass is exuberant and decorative, while 19th March 2021, Sunflower with Exotic Flower is much sparer and more graphic, showing how much Hockney could vary a composition built around the simple arrangement of flowers in a vase.
SPEAK TO A MADDOX ART ADVISOR
|
COLLECTOR INSIGHT: STILL LIFE WITH FLOWERS – A GENRE WITHIN A GENRE
|
Jonas Wood: Pattern, Space and the Flattened Interior
Los Angeles-based artist Jonas Wood is one of the most prominent American painters of his generation, known for his vivid paintings of interiors, plants, portraits and everyday objects. His domestic worlds are not always quite what they seem, however. A plant may come from his studio, a pot from his wife Shio Kusaka’s ceramic practice and the room itself from a photograph taken years earlier. Wood brings these disparate elements together through collage and drawing, constructing scenes from fragments of his own visual world.
Photography is often only the starting point. Wood cuts, rearranges and combines images, makes drawings and studies, and may remove or introduce objects before translating the composition into paint. The process helps account for the unusual and entirely deliberate spatial logic of his work, where viewpoints shift and depth is compressed. Responding to descriptions of his paintings as having “no space” and “no perspective”, Wood is unequivocal: “Well, that’s the vibe I like.”
Many of his recurring subjects come directly from his surroundings. Wood began painting plants after graduate school as a way of working from life, and his interest grew after moving to Los Angeles, where he became fascinated by the abundance of succulents. Plants, possessions and the interiors of his home and studio have since provided an evolving repertoire of subjects, giving his work its distinctive mixture of autobiography and invention.
His fascination with ceramics developed through his wife Kusaka, whose pots appear frequently in his paintings. That interest can be seen in Untitled (2009), in which a group of vessels becomes the focus of the composition. Their creative exchange moves in both directions, with her vessels becoming subjects for his work and elements of his imagery finding their way onto her ceramics. These personal sources sit alongside influences from art history, with Wood naming David Hockney and Alex Katz among the painters who have informed his work.
EXPLORE JONAS WOOD ART FOR SALE
Cooper’s Still Lifes: Domesticity as Aspiration
Cooper, Picnic With Papaya (2025)
Hailing from Evansville in Indiana, American Contemporary artist Cooper is known for his vibrant paintings of domestic interiors filled with plants, flowers, books, records and mid-century furniture. Originally trained in graphic design, he lived in Miami and Los Angeles before returning to his hometown, where he established his studio in 2019. The possessions that populate his paintings are never incidental. “My still-lifes are autobiographical,” he says. “They are a visual journal of everyday scenes that I am around and which are around me.”
Cooper deliberately sets out to make optimistic paintings, saying that he wants them to “radiate a positive energy back at you”, with many of his recurring motifs carrying personal associations. His stereo can be traced back to childhood visits to his grandparents’ house, where his grandfather would play records on a 1966 hi-fi. Memories such as these mingle with objects and experiences from Cooper’s own life and elements of invention, giving his paintings their curious combination of nostalgia and fantasy.
His graphic-design training can be seen in the dense patterns and saturated palettes that have become signatures of his work. Cooper cites David Hockney as his greatest influence, alongside Jonas Wood and Hilary Pecis.
Recent paintings have pushed those ideas in different directions. Still Life with Teal Roses (2025) features flowers, plants, a turntable, speakers, books and food in a richly layered composition that brings several of Cooper’s favourite motifs together. Picnic with Papaya (2025) transports a still life painting outdoors, uniting fruit, flowers, cakes, wine and tableware in a riotously patterned picnic scene. Here, the traditional subjects of food, flowers and vessels belong emphatically to Contemporary life.
Cooper made his Maddox Gallery debut with ‘Wild Noise’ in 2022, his first UK solo exhibition, which sold out. A six-month Artist Residency in London followed in 2024, and this autumn he returns to Maddox with a new exhibition that will explore the latest developments in his still life practice.
REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN COOPER
Nicolas Party: Making the Familiar Strange
Nicolas Party, Still Life (2016)
Swiss artist Nicolas Party has built a unique visual language around some of painting’s oldest subjects, including portraits, landscapes and still lifes. Fruit and vessels recur throughout his work, but they are rarely depicted quite as one might expect. Pears swell into exaggerated silhouettes, apples become near-perfect spheres and containers assume strangely organic forms, reducing common objects to something between representation and abstraction.
Giorgio Morandi is an important reference for Party’s still lifes. Like the Italian painter, he returns to simple arrangements of fruit and vessels and pares away extraneous detail to concentrate on form, volume and the relationships between them. Party takes that simplification in a different direction, creating smooth, biomorphic forms that can appear playful in one composition and distinctly uncanny in another. His own description of the genre captures that ambiguity: “Life is not still and nature is not dead, but maybe a painting can be.”
Pastel has become central to this approach. Party began experimenting with the medium after encountering a pastel portrait by Picasso at Fondation Beyeler, and has since spoken of his admiration for the 18th-century Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera, whom he considers one of its great masters. Historically associated with the delicacy of portraiture, pastel takes on a very different quality in Party’s hands, with the dense layers of pigment creating intensely saturated surfaces and giving his simplified forms a velvety solidity that makes them seem simultaneously tangible and unreal.
Yet colour is only part of what makes his still lifes so distinctive. In the monochrome mezzotint Still Life (2016), Party plays with the identity of the objects themselves. It is precisely the kind of ambiguity he describes, with the elongated pears and rounded apples resembling candles, complete with small, stem-like stalks that can equally be read as wicks.
EXPLORE NICOLAS PARTY ART FOR SALE
Zhou Song: The Everyday Object as Conceptual Territory
Zhou Song, Wisdom Tree I (2025)
Born in Jiangxi, China, in 1982 and now based in Beijing, Zhou Song is known for his technically precise, hyperrealist paintings in which the natural and man-made often collide. Everyday objects recur throughout his work, often moving beyond the traditional confines of still life as Zhou bends, enlarges and combines them with organic forms.
The pencil is one of his most intriguing recurring motifs. Made from wood but transformed into a tool of human invention, it brings the natural and manufactured together in a single object. Song plays with that dual identity in his ‘pencil trees’, where pencils twist and branch like living organisms, seemingly returning to the natural world from which they came. Through them, he explores where the natural ends and the artificial begins.
This idea can be seen in Wisdom Tree I (2025), where sharpened pencils coil among carefully rendered trees in an otherwise serene landscape. Their graphite tips, metal ferrules and erasers remain instantly identifiable despite their impossible proportions, with Zhou’s hyperrealist technique lending credibility to the surreal scene.
His work was most recently exhibited at Maddox Gallery in ‘Between Realms’, a joint show with Celine Ali in spring 2026 that explored the territory between reality and imagination. Recent solo exhibitions have included the Powerlong Art Museum in Shanghai and Osthaus Museum Hagen in Germany, reflecting growing international interest in an artist who takes objects associated with still life far beyond the conventional boundaries of the genre.
EXPLORE ZHOU SONG ART FOR SALE
Moritz Moll Still Life: Between Flowers and Abstraction
Moritz Moll, Turquoise Vase (2024)
In recent years, flowers have become a recurring subject for German artist Moritz Moll, whose paintings sit somewhere between figuration and abstraction. For him, painting a bouquet is akin to a musician practising scales: a chance to experiment freely with colour, texture and paint. As Moll explains: “In my floral paintings, I mainly enjoy composing colours and textures on the canvas, like a finger exercise. Bouquets are the perfect subject for this.”
Autumn Bouquet (2024) shows precisely what he means. Painted in acrylic and spray paint, the densely packed arrangement is unmistakably floral, but Moll varies the way individual blooms are described across the canvas. Some are clearly delineated, others are simplified into flatter areas of colour, while stems and smaller flowers become increasingly graphic. The bouquet gives him a recognisable structure within which different ways of making an image can coexist.
Matisse is an important reference, particularly in Moll’s understanding of colour as something that need not be subservient to naturalistic description. He also cites Alex Katz among his influences – both artists who found new possibilities in deceptively simple subjects. Moll’s use of spray paint alongside more traditional techniques takes those ideas into his own practice, allowing him to move continually between the flower as a recognisable subject and the marks from which it is made.
EXPLORE MORITZ MOLL ART FOR SALE
The Still Life Artist and the Collector: Why a 400-Year Tradition Continues to Reward Serious Attention
The longevity of still life painting tells us something very important about the genre. For four centuries, artists have returned to familiar objects not simply to depict them, but to test new ideas about painting. Cézanne used still life to challenge perspective, Braque to explore Cubism, and generations of artists since have continued to find new possibilities within the same familiar subjects. For collectors, understanding that history can add another dimension to the way a Contemporary still life is viewed and evaluated.
Still life also allows a collection to cross periods, styles and media without losing sight of a common subject. Flowers, food, vessels and domestic objects can be followed from one generation of artists to another, or a collection can concentrate entirely on their contemporary interpretations. Works range from original paintings and drawings to prints, editions and digital art, with considerable variation in scale and price.
The artists featured in this guide illustrate that breadth particularly well. David Hockney, Jonas Wood and Nicolas Party have established international museum and market profiles, while Cooper, Zhou Song and Moritz Moll bring very different contemporary perspectives to the genre. Together, they show why a subject with such a long and illustrious history continues to have relevance for collectors today.
Maddox Gallery offers access to works by a wide range of still life painters and artists, including those featured in this guide and other established and emerging names working within the genre. Our specialists can also provide insight into their wider practices, markets and available works.
From David Hockney’s still life art prints with flowers to Jonas Wood’s ceramics, Nicolas Party’s surreal fruit and Zhou Song’s pencil trees, Contemporary still life encompasses an extraordinary range of subjects, techniques and ideas.
Explore our collection of still life works to discover those currently available at Maddox Gallery, or speak to our specialists for advice on individual artists and finding the right piece for your collection.
Speak to the Maddox Art Advisory team to explore available Still Life art.