Still life with pineapple and butterfly 2008

Mary Fedden’s still life with pineapple and butterfly, painted sometime in the late 20th or early 21st century, is a really joyful, colourful painting. I can imagine the artist setting up the scene with great care, arranging the fruit just so, maybe moving things around until they felt right. Look at how the brushstrokes create form, like the purple grapes on the black plate and the stripy cloth they sit on. There's a delightful naivety to this painting, reminiscent of early modernists like Matisse or Derain who were unafraid to play with colour and form. Fedden shares that love of creating unexpected harmonies, using complementary colours to make the painting sing. And that little butterfly, floating above the pineapple, feels like a touch of pure whimsy, a reminder that painting can be about joy and playfulness, as well as serious contemplation.