Candles, which seem to burn from within, create a sense of magic. What is it about the symbolic lighting of candles? Why do people feel the need to connect with a small, insignificant flame? What comfort can this thing possibly provide? Yet it clearly does. People in this technological age are still drawn to this ‘flimsy flame’. It has a simple power to throw light yet at the same time reveal its vulnerability to death. This is surely what makes it endearing. Its life is in fact like our own. What is better, to burn bright and brief, or long and dull? The candle speaks of this. We all make our choice.

Andrew Hemingway is an artist best known for his hyperrealist still life paintings. Each year, for the past 20 years, he has made a painting of a candle, either lit or partially smouldering, on the edge of extinction, all of them conveying a searching narrative.