Fernan’s asparagus paintings counter the traditional still life genre in which precise lines depict bountiful meals bursting with color and realism and instead present sparse plates in muted tones with textural, heavy brushstrokes. The pigmented physicality of Fernan’s paint rounds into space and transforms the unassuming subject into the palpable and tactile—the real.

Whether an intimately close frame, positioning the viewer in front of their own subsequent meal, or a distanced view, spotlighting the loneliness of a plate uneaten in an empty room, Fernan’s paintings demonstrate how the artist can cheekily pare back a traditional genre to its essentials, using only simple, loose forms and unadorned subjects to create an impact all their own.