One of Philadelphia's most articulate artists, Scott Noel is as comfortable with words as he is with paint, and thus has few problems verbalizing his particular artistic views. In the case of Woodmere's Still Life with Crayon and Bag, Noel himself eloquently described the execution of the painting in a letter now among the artist's files at Woodmere: ". . . I was primarily interested in studying the unity bestowed by a given light and arrangement on an ensemble of unprepossessing objects. I wanted to study this unity with an extremely physical and assertive painterly touch. Through the course of the painting I discovered an unexpected sacramental dignity in the image. This is a quality for which I cannot take credit, but from whose discovery I learned a great deal. What I learned had something to do with the evocative power of interval and emptiness. I think the spaces between the objects, the physical presence of the 'absences' among the objects, beneath the tablecloth and surrounding the ensemble are very important and taught me something that has become especially relevant to the figure compositions I've been developing through the nineties.†Noel's piece joins numerous other masterful still life paintings in the permanent collection by such artists as Adolph Borie, Arthur Meltzer, Paulette Van Roekens, Ben Solowey, and Jane Piper.
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