Sub Rosa
Alex Emsley
About this Item
South African 1973-
Sub Rosa
2025
signed with the artist's initials
oil on panel
50 by 34,5cm excluding frame; 53 by 38 by 5cm including frame
Exhibited
131 Gallery, Cape Town, Ides of March, 12 March to 7 April 2025.
Notes
For over twenty years Alex Emsley has been painting flowers, not simply because of their beauty, but because of the symbolic nature they carry. Flowers embody a paradox: tender yet transient, radiant yet sorrowful. Emsley's paintings hold that fragile balance.
In the present lot a soft, delicate rose sits gently nestled in a slender vase atop a quiet table. A tender light spills in from the left, illuminating the fine veins of its petals. The glow gives the rose - and the entire composition - an ethereal, almost flesh-like quality. What was once still now feels animate, as if the image has come to life.
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