The Flowering Spray

• The two open flowersEach has five petals, with tiny stamens at the centre.
• The budsTwo pink buds are just beginning to open.
• The shades of the leavesThe lighter and darker greens are built up from separate brushstrokes.
• The rim of the seedThe dark brown band framing the picture is the apple seed's own skin.

• BaseA halved apple seed
• Painting surface“Austrolux” paper stretched inside the seed
• TechniqueWatercolour
• 1979Year created

First he had to cut the fragile seed in half, polish its inside smooth and then stretch the paper inside it without a single crease. At this scale, watercolour has to be applied almost dry: a brushstroke that is too wet would bleed between the fibres of the paper.

A tree grown from an apple seed almost never bears the same apple as the one the seed came from. Every seed mixes the traits of two parent trees, so each one grows into a new, unique variety.