I spend five weeks in France at chateau L'Age Baston. I teach from 10 am until 6 pm every day, six days a week and paint picture after picture. And of the dozens of pictures that I paint, which one do I like the best? This sour-looking windfall apple from the twisted tree outside the studio door. Cezanne said he would 'astonish Paris with an apple'... and he did; time after time. With Uglow, it was pears. Morandi, of course, couldn't leave the bottle alone. Forget 'annunciations' and 'depositions'; never mind about the big themes: loss, genocide, mortality, love; how much meaning can you pack into a solitary fruit?
By the end of August, I'm in Italy for two more weeks of teaching. Not really apple country, Italy, but at Casa dell' Unicorno, the persimmons are already heavy on the trees. My favourite is neither green nor orange, but somewhere in between and bears a fabulous, purple scar; and so fickle is the colour that I struggle with it for an entire day. When I return to the painting the next morning, I discover that the cleaner has thrown my persimmon away. To me, it was the fruit of all knowledge; to her, of course, it's just a hideous, unripe kaki.
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