This is Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits, and Vegetables in a Market, which my boy Frans Snyders painted in 1614, in Flemland. I don't know what's going on here but this painting commands your attention. To my illiterate eyes, Santa Claus has killed Rudolph, there's a cockfight under the table, and Santa is also getting robbed. A black cat lurks profitably beneath it all, gold eyes shining like equatorial moons. It's beautiful work, from back when painters put work in.

The detail is incredible, paintings like this tell so many stories. In this case mad carnage. Santa killed Rudolph, Pumba, and Peter Rabbit. There's a tropical peacock in there for some reason. The squabs are still squawking.

Technically, the metal work is exquisite, I'm always amazed when painters can replicate how metal captures light. Like this other Still Life from Hannah Skeele (Fruit Piece, 1860), with its exquisite silver and ceramics.

Skeele does glass, ceramic, and metal in one work, a technical trifecta. I think she does ceramic and metal amazingly, but I must say her glass and strawberry game is weak. This is odd because she painted a lot of strawberries here. But the ceramic is both warm and cool at the same time, and the silver is also somehow more than a color, it shines. Painting is still what we call (possibly offensively) godayata magic, magic to a villager. A great painter can conjure more than reality out of goop. I've tried painting (or had painting tried on me, in school) and it's magic what painters do.

This, for example, is a Sri Lankan painter I discovered in a tea estate bungalow. Anupa Indika Perera.

His Still Life shows common Sri Lankan household items (of a bygone age, no plastic). I suppose few people do Still Lifes anymore, because life is so disposable and dismal. But a few people do, Noah Verrier for example.

When it comes to modern, trippy Still Lifes, my favorite is Van Gogh, like his Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples. I've seen this painting live in Chicago, and it vibrates on the wall. It's uncanny.

Anyways, that's an art. Or seven arts this time. I'll regularly share art so we don't all go crazy. Life is beautiful, when it's Still.