Next to the large bay, grew a huge bed of oriental poppies, big orange-red blooms the size of your hand, craning their necks out of a mass of hairy foliage. These rarely lasted more than a day once picked, but she would treat the house and bring in a vase top heavy with them. It was these that appeared in her first still lifes* in the late 1970s, around the time that Josse had left home for university. The poppies and Betsy, the white cairn, were perhaps just as a whim at first, because the flowers are almost incidental to the picture, it was more of an interior than a still life but she was on her way.
Derek would joke that Betsy was a still life in herself, as getting old by now, the dog rarely stirred or moved.
* Ruth did actually paint a few still lifes in oils, while at the Vicarage, under the eye of Martina.
Betsie with poppies I
Watercolour on paper
23 x 29 cm
Ref: DSC_0236.JPG