A year of endings and beginnings, of turbulence and change. Making the fruit portraits was powerfully therapeutic. I painted them in the first fortnight of the summer holidays in something of a controlled frenzy (I painted Black Cherry and Raspberry in the same day). Their stillness, silence and simplicity inspired me. Their shape reassured me and their colours excited me. Their easily overlooked magnificence challenged me to look harder and to draw upon just about every watercolour technique in the book. I will look back on them as companions through difficult times, as full stops on things past. And ellipses towards things to come…