On our first visit to Florence we found this lovely plate at Armando Poggi (apoggi.com).  It is so typical of Majolica pottery representing colourful fruit, flowers and leaves in a beautiful design.  Setting it on repurposed scaffolding planks in a simple plywood orange box that had held a Christmas wreath I added actual fruit to mirror the plate’s trompe l’oeil subject.   The interplay between the three dimensional ‘real’ fruit with the plate’s glazed peaches and lemons makes the magic of Realist painting come alive. Now framed in a simple white and gold spoon shaped moulding the vibrant colours come into their own in this statement painting. 

Oil on linen  2016  158 x 208 cm  62 x 82 inches