Lemon 1971

This is Leo Dee’s ‘Lemon’, made with graphite on paper. When you look at it, you might think: Is it a lemon? Or is it a head? The soft rendering of graphite gives this otherwise sharp fruit a ghostly ambiguity. Maybe Dee felt this ambiguity too. He was known for drawings of everyday objects, elevating them with an almost spiritual quality. I wonder, was he trying to see the soul of the lemon? I feel that the best paintings come from a place of not-knowing, and then slowly, gradually, the artist feels their way toward something that feels both familiar and strange. It’s what painters do – we see the world, but we also translate it, bringing our own unique sensibility to what we see. I feel a strange kinship with Dee, an artist I never met. The legacy of painting is a long conversation through time, and we are all just talking to each other.