Blackberries

Original:  Oil on Canvas

Linda Bennion at Queensgate Studios gets up at the crack of dawn every Monday and goes to New Covent Garden to buy flowers for her fortunate students to paint. The studio always smells delicious and is filled with colour and interest – peonies, delphiniums, catkins, pussy willow, tulips, stargazer lilies, Chinese lantern plants. She grows headily scented Margaret Merril roses on her balcony too, their terracotta pots foaming with trailing lobelia. One day last year she had brought back some sprays of ripening blackberries from the market which I absolutely loved. This painting is the result.