Jew Chew Honeydew 1962

John Bratby made this painting with lush strokes of oil paint, resulting in a still life exploding with colour and texture. I imagine he started by laying down that vibrant ground, a table cloth, maybe, with stripes of yellow, blue, red, and green. I bet Bratby was in his studio, eyeing those melons, feeling that juicy weight and thinking about how to translate that onto the canvas. Did he start with an underpainting, or did he go straight in with those thick, creamy strokes? Look at how he’s rendered the seeds of the melon, almost like an army of tiny soldiers lined up at attention. And that pineapple! Each little diamond-shaped segment rendered with a daub of paint. I get the sense he was really looking, really seeing the world in all its messy, vibrant detail. It reminds me a little of Van Gogh, that same intensity and love of the everyday. In his art, as in Van Gogh's, we see how paintings can spark conversations and a deep understanding of each other's creative practice.