Hello, I’m Rebecca Ritchie, a still life painter working in oils from my home studio in Tunbridge Wells. Before returning to painting full time in 2015, I worked in television set design, where composition, light and atmosphere were already central to my practice. That visual training carried over into my painting, alongside a long-standing love of the Dutch masters and their use of light, stillness and ordinary objects. Since then, my paintings have been regularly selected for national exhibitions

I’m drawn to familiar objects, especially the ones we tend to overlook. On their own they may seem ordinary, but they can carry far more than their appearance suggests. Memory, recognition and story are often there somewhere, sometimes quietly, sometimes with an immediate jolt.

That is what interests me most: the moment when something familiar seems to collapse the distance between then and now. It might come through something remembered from childhood, or through an everyday object that has gathered associations over time.

I work slowly, building each painting in layers and choosing every object for a reason. What I hope to make are still lifes that feel precise and considered, but also hold something just beneath the surface: a memory, a connection, a story waiting to be recognised.