Kurt Jackson at Messums

On the day I  went to London for the Peter Sacks exhibition, I also popped into Messum's ( where I saw the David Tress) for the current Kurt Jackson exhibition: Olive and Fig:Provence.  We had a fig tree in our previous garden  but it only ever produced a few underwhelming fruits, nothing like the luscious qualities  of these. 

 I preferred the depictions of the fruit to that of the trees themselves as they had a more abstract quality  and were so well observed. Of the  tree paintings I like the mystery of the one below ( and how he uses text to  describe what he sees and hears ) , it reminded me a bit of Samuel Palmer. 

The studies  of many figs  carried out in different media , reminded me of the '100 Mussels' exercise,  the pleasure in the combination  of observation, how to portray the subtle differences , the enjoyment of  using the paint, the repetition. 

I loved the monoprints of the fig leaves and how they'd been incorporated along with  drawings, paintings and various objects in a number of collages 

My favourite was the painting of figs and snail shells on a sheet of newspaper, the contrast between the black and white, the hard and soft surfaces.