Please note, this exhibition will be ending a day earlier than originally planned to ensure the paintings make their way back to the artist in Belgium before the new Brexit rules come in to effect at the end of the year. The last day to view this exhibition is Thursday 17th December from 10am to 5pm. We thank you for your understanding.

At nearly 69 I am starting to feel my age. I have witnessed great change and I find that reflected in my attitude to my work. The simplicity of still life painting that I remember in my youth, was an act of placing objects on a stage and observing, now I find the process altogether more complicated.

These days I find I’m using the subjects as props, not a simple depiction but an expression of my own mental state. The play of light and shade over the fruit are more a reflection of my own shifting moods, my imagined fantasies of a natural bounty unchanged since Eden. It is this expression of myself in the work that I hope you will agree takes it beyond simple representation.

I want to create paintings that, while still I hope beautiful, go beyond the soullessness of hyperrealism or the simple reportage of a photograph.

- Johan de Fré, 2020

© Panter & Hall