Tatties

Digital Still Life Renders

Artist Statement

The Tatties series comprises three digital artworks: Tattie on a Plate, Tattie Floaters, and Tatties Oan a Fork. This series transforms an ordinary object into a sculptural subject, using the potato to project themes of consumerism, materiality, and cultural perceptions of value.

Concept and Themes

The Tatties series re-contextualises the potato, a familiar and unassuming object, to highlight the tension between simplicity and excess. It encourages viewers to reflect on the relationship between material culture and ‘aestheticisation’. The series uses the transformation of the potato to explore broader cultural narratives, reframing its symbolic and material identity through aesthetic inquiry.

Tattie on a Plate frames a solitary potato in stark simplicity. Its unadorned presence, set against a polished plate, highlights the object’s raw authenticity while reframing it as an aesthetic subject that evokes isolation and mundanity.

Tattie Floaters introduces a dynamic and surreal arrangement. The composition critiques consumerist excess and the absurdity of aestheticising the everyday, transforming the potato into a symbol of abundance.

Tatties Oan a Fork shifts the focus to pre-tension, with three potatoes delicately balanced on a single fork. The precarious composition conveys both instability and inevitability, prompting an introspective reflection.

Technical Craftsmanship

The Tatties series was crafted entirely through digital modelling and rendering, with every detail created manually to reflect the artist’s intent. Using advanced 3D software, the textures of the potato skins were developed with precise attention to their natural irregularities, while the polished cutlery was rendered to achieve a refined material contrast.

Lighting plays a central role, inspired by chiaroscuro techniques rooted in the Baroque tradition. Strong contrasts between light and shadow emphasise the sculptural qualities of each piece, creating depth and drama.

The compositions also draw on the influence of Dutch Golden Age interiors, particularly their use of diffused natural light to create intimate and atmospheric spaces. This painterly quality imbues the works with a sense of timelessness, while the restrained colour palette and minimalist interior details provide a balanced and evocative framework for the subject matter.

Aesthetic and Spatial Design

Subtle interior elements anchor the works, providing a sense of context that is both familiar and abstracted. These minimal settings heighten the contrast between organic textures and polished materials, drawing attention to the transformation of the potato into a sculptural object.

The minimalist compositions remove the objects from their functional associations, encouraging viewers to perceive them as forms in their own right. Negative space and precise lighting enhance the narrative between texture, material, and light, creating depth and balance within each composition.

Closing

The Tatties series exemplifies The Visual Aye’s focus on conceptual and technical precision. By elevating an ordinary object, the series critiques consumerism and material culture, reframing the mundane as a subject for aesthetic inquiry.

Through its considered use of light, form, and spatial context, Tatties invites viewers to reconsider their relationship with the everyday and offers a nuanced reflection on cultural ideals of beauty, excess, and value.

Medium: 3D Digital Render
Year: 2022
© The Visual Aye