Linda Bristow, Coloured Flowers

Life Colours

After a collection of ceramic pots by Linda Bristow.

Earlier, I see snowdrops whitening the verges and take them as a sign of renewal. Now, I walk in on this genial crowd of ceramic pots, each enfolding a ceramic flower, standing tall in warm-lit pastel blues and pinks and tangerines, patterned with spots and squares and lines and loops, and all their petals held out open to the light. These are the colours my mother favours in her clothes, those light and gentle colours she has in suits and skirts and scarves, and, like these pots, blending, going well together. I recall the whiteness of the snowdrops – don’t the Chinese wear white for mourning? – and my mother, elderly and frail, her health in decline. This year, the harbingers of spring for me are these ceramic flowers, the colours not of dying but of life.

Rick Rycroft