by John Gorman



Artwork Description

Lemons, limes, peaches


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Lemons, limes, peaches. 30x30cm, graphite and orange chalk A splendid demonstration of everything John Gorman says about drawing from nature without having it as a “model”. These ten fruits arranged as if on a place mat elegantly painted in deep orange, but themselves devoid of colour, seem to tell us a story or stories, to converse with each other, to be animated by a life of their own… Some of them sag a little, others stand up proudly and many of them seem to have eyes or even evoke a woman’s naked breast, nipple stretched out. One, in the upper left, is in the shape of a bird. They offer themselves to the eye, naked like a naked woman or man, and the artist seem to grasp here what Giacometti was desperately seeking in his apple still lifes: their deep essence, their “soul”, perhaps… There are many Matisse and Picasso here, who themselves studied the Dutch masters in the Louvre, and this composition is bathed in the imaginary sun of the Mediterranean as well as the rarer sun of the northern countries. What for John Gorman must be only an exercise in passing, shows that in his work, no motif can be too poor to be grasped, with as much talent and inventiveness as the most ambitious compositions… Delphine Costedoat



Artwork Details


Medium: Drawing Other

Genre: Figurative