Elliot Love
Banana Car // Mount Welly
Oil on Panel
310 x 310 mm
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Painting size 150 x 150mm | Framed size 310 x 310mm
In Mount Wellington, Auckland, Elliot Love encountered a scene that distilled his fascination with suburban idiosyncrasy. A vintage truck, its roof adorned with a sculptural banana, sits in balanced dialogue with a sharply angular house, all beneath the familiar damp light of an Auckland afternoon. Once, perhaps, part of a local fruit market, the truck introduces a touch of whimsy, while its presence remains strangely resonant within the suburban setting.
The composition combines elements Love seeks through his work: urban architecture, overlooked objects, and fleeting narratives in a single, unassuming moment, rendered with delicate precision in oil on an intimate scale.
Artist Bio
Elliot Love is a contemporary painter living in Auckland, New Zealand.
Nostalgia is inherent in these acutely observed depictions of Love’s obsessive interest in cars of the 1980’s and 90’s, all set within a city’s still and lifeless streets. Working in both oil and acrylic on canvas, often on an unusually small scale, Love’s beautifully rendered compositions present delightful mysteries and provoke inspection, with an invitation to linger within his finely detailed architectural landscapes.
Equal attention is given to light; the humming glow of a street lamp, a glint reflecting off the boot of the car, or shadows brought by dusk. With no people present, the paintings evoke a sense we are here in secret observation of stillness and subject, a car belonging to someone else’s life: Are we alone? Who does this car belong to and where are they now?