The levity with which Eleanor Dunning paints weight translates into scenes that exude a nonchalance. The serendipitous colour combinations display with the upturned perspective to render a version of domesticity. The artist pays attention to lines, curvature and a sense of balance: that of the objects grouped together in a room, temporary holding spaces. This compositional balance is often drawn attention to within the painting: by an apple core on the edge of a table; a teacup balancing on the edge of an armchair; a towel on the back of the chair; a decorative bowl on the edge of the coffee table.
These elements also cite the people that occupy the scenes in their absence. Through scale, perspective and technique the way the furniture pieces are painted makes them seem slightly inflated – more than they seem, or eminently seeming: representative of craftsmanship, the home and the absent appreciators of the objects that the titles also sometimes indicate. Patrick Caulfield, whose succinct style relates to this approach, said that he was interested in ‘the shock of the familiar’. Eleanor Dunning’s scenes take on a formal rigour, but are receptive too; delineated in the wry pastel radiance of the artist’s palette.