On April 12 2020 a close friend suddenly died. I’d known him all my life and he was so precious to me. A tree peony on my balcony, overlooking the estuary, suddenly burst into flower as he was dying on the emergency covid ward. My last communication to him was to send him a photograph of the flower wishing him strength, which of course he never saw.
In 2024 I painted 2-metre oil paintings of the peony at different life stages from its early buds through to flower and back to decay.
