Auction: Lemons and Bay

Oil on Panel 7 x 5 inches

This painting is on an acid-free hardboard panel.

I’ve been looking at a lot of Northern Renaissance still life painting recently. I’ve had Dutch still life paintings drifting through my mind. Somehow, they must have seeped into me a little and I’ve become quite preoccupied with a handful of images.

This, I guess, is what happens when some of that gets filtered through the way I usually work.

More realised, I suppose, more finished, but still there are areas where the form has dissolved. Those areas are perhaps a little less obvious than they have been lately, but they still represent another preoccupation I have and which I expect to keep showing up. Something very interesting happens in a painting when some of the from is quite finished, realised, and some of it is dissolved.

It reflects some of the way we see, I think, and for me it also reflects impermanence, and uncertainty.

I have a tea-cloth that’s featured in quite a few paintings lately, with light, olive green polka dots on it. It’s this tea cloth. Towards the end of this painting I put the polka dots in but then immediately painted them out again. It wasn’t that they were bad, it was just that the painting didn’t need them. I think having the cloth painted with more brevity is just right for the lemons and the bay leaves. They didn’t need anything arguing with them, trying to take attention away from them.

And these lemons are, after all, kind of special. The come from my local organic shop, as all my recent lemons have, and recently they’ve been getting some very interesting lemons in the shop - oddly shaped, more green than yellow, with little imperfections all over their surface that make them more interesting paint.

So I tried to paint these lemons honestly, to allow them to be themselves, and to bring out something beautiful about them. I hope you like them as much as I do.

Starting bid is $150

Payment is by PayPal - (although you can pay through PayPal with a credit card without having to set up an account, if you don’t have one).

How to bid

Just click the "bid here" link above and enter your name, email (this will be kept private) and the amount you want to bid.

The auction uses proxy bidding, which means you can set a Maximum Bid, and until that's reached, you're protected from being outbid. So if Bidder A places a Maximum Bid of $200 and Bidder B comes along to try and outbid A, A will be protected till B outbids A over $200.

You’ll be notified of any other bids and whether you’ve won the auction by email automatically. If you win the auction, I’ll send you an email with a link to pay by PayPal.

PLEASE NOTE: As the auction comes to a close, you’ll need to refresh the page to see the latest bids. It may look as if you’ve won when the countdown finishes, but you’ll only see the most recent bids if you refresh the page, so there may have been more bids that you’re not seeing!

Shipping

International shipping is by UK Royal Mail International (tracked) and can take a few days to get to you. I'll let you know by email as soon as I send the painting, and give you the tracking number. I’ll need to allow some time for the painting to dry thoroughly before I send it to you. Usually, two to four weeks.

Returns:

If for any reason reason you’re not happy with your painting, you can return it to me within 14 days for a full refund. Buyer pays return shipping.

If payment isn’t made within three days of purchase, the painting will be offered to the next highest bidder or re-auctioned.