As I’ve said many times already, probably too many times now, the whole fruit (and veg) thing started in early 2019 when a friendly market trader at the still beautifully ungentrified Ridley Road Market over in Dalston, on the edges of Hackney, here in East London, threw a lemon at me and shouted (in a rich West Indian flavoured London accent), “hey painter man, paint a Lemon”. And so the Lemon from Ridley Road Lemon was painted an a series of paintings was born that evolved into a market stall of fruit and veg paintings, a show called “Fruit Shop” in an art gallery based in an old East London Greengrocers shop. The series of paintings has continued (I do like a series) and here we are late in 2022, not painting so many pieces of fruit but yes, still doing it, still including pomegranates or freshly fallen apples in bigger paintings, still finding it hard to resist an aubergine or an orange. There’s just something very enjoyable about painting fruit (and yes, technically aubergine is a fruit), there will still, now and again, be fresh fruit and veg….