Thirty years ago, when we lived in Rome, I bought most of my food from the local markets. In the summer the peaches were one of those necessary indulgences, not just for their smell and taste but because of their form and colour. I vividly remember bringing home a bag of peaches, I think I had bought a mix of yellow and white peaches, and spilling them out onto our table. We had very little furniture and very few things in general. Our tablecloth was an offcut I found in a shop in Stratford-on-Avon, that apparently was the fabric used in a BBC studio. It was blue and white. I could barely wait to begin drawing what lay before me. I still have the drawing, somewhere.
When I composed this I hadn't been thinking about the visceral pleasure the orange peaches on the blue tablecloth thirty years before had given me, but as I drew, I remembered and tried to evoke that intensity again.
This was another stop-and-go still life. I picked two bouquets this time but in the end it would have been necessary anyway as I needed that white flower to still the composition.
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