Delighted to have my work selected for this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy and to have been able to attend ‘Varnishing Day’ at the Royal Academy on Monday. This wonderful show is coordinated by Alison Wilding. Her chosen theme is ‘Climate’. The curators have put together a varied and sumptuous array of contemporary art practice, impeccably presented and hung.

My painting ‘Steel’ no. 863 was selected by her and hangs in Room 5. ‘Steel’ portrays a pear, a fragment of nature, prone and vulnerable, laid bare to scrutiny in an unsettlingly, ambiguous environment. The title ‘Steel’ reflects nature’s problematic relationship to man, industry and their impact on the environment. It refers to evidence of 2 cut marks to the skin of the pear, to the pear’s stem, shaped as a sabre, resting as if in submission on the steel, blue-grey surface.