“When I became ill last year, colour drained from my life. I saw everything in monochrome –the beige of the hospital ward. Even when I had left hospital , I could not resume work again; the enthusiasm , the appetite had gone for food, for life and worse, for art. Previously, I had no idea what an amount of concentration it required to put brush to paper and how futile to try if the vision had gone. Still spring came and life slowly renewed itself. One day, I began to dream of food again, and my thoughts went to our local street market in France. I thought of the colourful wares displayed under striped awnings snaking down our little curving main street. The deep green cress, grown by the smiley horny-handed cress lady, stacked in neat bunches by the bundles of long crimson radishes, their insides so startlingly white. The glistening yellow peppers, the fat, purple-tipped artichokes. Obviously I was beginning to recover.

 

In France at Easter, I asked my son to go to the boulangerie and choose me five loaves of bread. When he brought them back, I laid them on my studio table and began to paint them just like that, some of them still wrapped.it was on (for me) a very large piece of thick watercolour paper, and I rubbed on a pastel background, which gave it a soft, almost tempera feel. By the time I had finished,however the bread was rock hard and had to be thrown away. But I was excited by the painting-it had a certain immediacy and it was a new beginning.

Back in London , pasta was bought in Soho ( I have never seen black pasta in France) and Berwick Street became a pale imitation of our local Wednesday street market. These pictures I was now painting were getting even bolder and I was painting with an urgency as if to make up for all the beige blankness.

 

This summer in France there arose an unexpected problem for the painter of nature mortes –it was simply too hot. Out of the sun there were no enlivening shadows, wheras in the sun all frizzled or withered as you watched.

 

One day a kind neighbour bought me eight magnificent mackerel she had just caught straight from the sea. They were the freshest I had ever seen, their bellies iridescent in sky blue and pink.: there was even lemon yellow amongst the tiger stripes on top. This was exactly what I wanted. I had a new sheet of paper to hand, and laid the glinting fishes out on the garden table in front of the house. Immediately , I started work dashing in the iridescence . No good-within a few minutes the shine dulled to sheen, their eyes glazed, the fins dried out and the tails curled. Sun –fried fish . I turned some of them over to try again, painting even quicker. I finished the painting partly by memory of their former state, but it was frustrating to have to throw these, too, away. As I had to the crab, the oysters. The ratatouille, however we were eating for weeks and I do not particularly care for ratatouille.

 

Under a cloudless blue sky I spent a very happy summer painting the often strange beauty and endless variety of food. My appetite had returned, I was looking and seeing; the pleasure flooded back and colours began to sing again.

 

When I got back to London in autumn , I had a heart attack. Different ward, same beige .Staring up at the ceiling tiles I now had memories-and momentos –of glittering fish , a shimmering sea,luminous pink watermelons and a golden summer’s day “

 

GLYNN BOYD HARTE

 

for His Final exhibition at the Curwen Gallery 10-24th December 2003

 

Glynn died December 16th 2003 a week after his Private View