Kitchen Table
In Kitchen Table, Rolfe captures a corner of her kitchen table. The cherry-patterned tablecloth and pair of plugs in their sockets become the protagonists of the composition. She focuses on seemingly banal features of everyday life, transforming them into something beautiful and haunting. There are subtle differences between this work and its sister painting, Mum with Red Cup, created the same year. While in Mum with Red Cup the scene appears to be illuminated by a lamp, in Kitchen Table it instead seems flooded in natural light. The plugs are replaced with a human presence – that of Rolfe’s elderly mother. By creating these companion pieces, Rolfe draws attention to the passage of time: through the changing light of a single day and the experiences and memories that make up a human life.
