Formal Analysis of Stuart Carson Edie painting, "Cool Still Life"

          Situated in Bucksbaum between two wooden classroom doors on a cream-colored and blemished wall, Stuart Carson Edie's 1961 oil on canvas painting, named "Cool Still Life" is framed delicately in a simple and thin golden rim. Initially intrigued by the painting because of the harmonious complementary colors, I sat down across from the composition on an uncomfortable radiator, leaning against the huge window pane displaying an enclosed and simple courtyard. I am looking at the canvas, though often interrupted by passing Grinnell students and professors who walk across the grey tiled floor. There is a constant mechanical hum as well as the soft jazz song of a student-band practicing from a few rooms down, coloring my perceptions of the painting. The painting seems imbalanced in its composition, since the lower half of the painting is filled with much more vibrant colors and rougher textures than is the top. There is a thin and smooth layer of a light value of grey-brown paint at the top, which is invaded by dry and chaotic dark-brown brushstrokes emerging from the lower-center of the picture. These dark-brown strokes allow us to see the various layers of the composition. The brushstrokes on the bottom half of the composition are fast, furious, and uneven in their thickness. There is a dark brown and ambiguously-defined shadow which surrounds the top and right side of the object, allowing the object itself to pop in the contrast of its bright colors, prompting an illusion of depth. The ambiguous subject is made up of imperfect geometric shapes (circles and parallelograms), which make the subject appear extremely angular. Many of these geometric shapes which make up the subject are defined more clearly with different colored contour lines. The subject itself is made up of different hues and values of orange, peach, blue, grey and white, though there is a hint of green. At the bottom of the composition, the volume and clarity of subject and its borders break down, as the orange, blue and grey geometric shapes are mixed with the brown background of the composition, ultimately leading to a diverse mélange of colors.

          The composition itself conveys both a serenity in the predominant warmth of the colors, as well as a chaos in the strokes and the fractured appearance resulting from the division of the geometric shapes. The painting is quite successful in its ability to instigate contradictory emotional responses, both a sense of calmness as well as anxiety, and yet remain beautifully unified.