Painting Bookshelves

Australian artist Victoria Reichelt has painted a series of paintings of bookshelves:




Reichert told the InsideOut Blog: "These works are a paradox to paint - as once the books are an image on canvas, they are shut forever and can never be read. In a painting, they serve a very different purpose from their intended function – they are purely objects like the others I paint and you’re forced to judge them by the covers."

After starting with staged bookshelves, more recently she has been painting the bookshelves of people as she finds them. Michael Lieberman on Book Patrol comments: "The leap from painting staged bookshelves to actual bookshelves is huge and opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. Imagine high-end collectors having portraits done of their collections to complement their own portraits ...."