Still Life with Figs

This beautifully soft and luminous small painting by Provence-based artist Julian Merrow-Smith captures that moment the figs are on the point of bursting with sweetness. The black-purple skin is velvet to the touch but melting and glistening with juice.

It’s a sublime illustration of the following lines in the new book:

“The haunting began…one afternoon in late summer.

    It was one of those days so intensely alive and aromatic you could hear as well as smell the fig tree in the courtyard. Wasps hummed in the leaves as the fruit ripened and split; globes of warm dark purple were dropping, ripping open as they landed with sodden gasps.

   The pulse that pumped out the sweet, heady scent was quickening as I bent down to pick the fallen figs, then pulled them apart to find insects were already drunk on their scarlet hearts.”

From: The Lantern

Julian Merrow-Smith is a British painter living near Crillon le Brave, a tiny Provencal hill village at the foot of Mont Ventoux. An accomplished portrait painter, Julian regularly exhibits with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London, and his paintings have been widely shown in Britain, France and the United States.

In February 2005 Julian started Postcard from Provence, a daily painting project at http://shiftinglight.com@ Shifting Light | Postcard from Provence
A painting a day: daily paintings from Julian Merrow-Smith's
studio in Provence. Each day he paints a small still life or landscape inspired by the countryside outside his studio, its fruits and everyday artefacts. The beauty of small things…