Figs

We first came to the house in 1988. The limbs of the fig tree had been killed by the terrible winter of 85-86, when the mercury fell to -25 degrees C. Fig trees are very tough though, and when we first saw it, the lumpy twisted trunk was shooting out vigorous young stems.

In the years that followed it grew and grew. By the mid 90’s we were able to take down the loggia we had built to give us shade, and eat under the fig tree,  a fountain of cool green, that in heavy heat of summer became another room.

The tree developed a two tier ecosystem, humans picking the fruit from the lower branches, insects and birds taking the rest.  Sometimes in spring we hear the cries of golden oriel, who love figs. They are very shy and at the slightest hint of humans, shoot off in a blurred flash of yellow. As soon as the spring crop of figs has been consumed they leave. It is as if they have come all the way from Africa to eat our figs.

 

(1) taken with thanks from Wikipedia

Photography by James Forshall

For directions to the Moncrieff-Bray Gallery click here

Painting native oysters

I’ve been painting and sketching native oysters, Ostrea edulis.  I buy them from oyster fishermen at Mylor in Cornwall near Falmouth. It was bitterly cold then and it’s pretty cold now.

It takes a long time to establish a native oyster bed. They were a major source of cheap food. In 1851, for example, a round 500 million oysters were sold through Billingsgate. Our oyster beds were destroyed by a series of cold winters, surely not the first though, in the mid 20th Century, and then pollution, the parasite, Bonnania Ostrea, the beastly slipper limpets and oyster drills which drill holes into them and eat it contents, they are a big threat for commercial oyster farms.

Now they can only be collected under license in Scotland.

Native Oysters, acrylic on canvas 50 cms x 100 cms

All photographs by James Forshall

Plaice

His rather squashed eyes look up at me reproachfully. If he were alive they would be sticking out of the mud or sand in which he would be half buried awaiting a careless crustacean, or bivalve. Both the eyes are on the right side of his face which is flat and comes to a point. It is as if a ordinary fish had been redesigned by Picasso during his cubist period and then run through the rollers of a ringer. I bought him from the fish counter in Carrefour and now he is sitting with me under the fig tree while I paint his spots. Not the orange ones. I haven’t got to those yet. Plaice can adapt their colour somewhat to their surroundings but the orange spots don’t change.

He’s quite small. Plaice (Pleuronectes platessa), are caught younger these days, though capable of living until 40 most are caught at the age of 6: too many humans, eating too much.

Marks and Spencer are good about selling you fish in season and Sainsbury’s claim to be the largest retailer of fish certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council but when in England I always buy fish from the local fishmonger,  Gibson’s Plaice, who have generously supplied me with many of my models.

If you would like to be kept informed of forthcoming shows email me at mailto:catherineforshallpainting@gmail.com

All photographs © James Forshall