Still life

She is a very good artist, but she is not a very fast artist.

Her early works were still lifes but it took her so long to complete these that the flowers or fruit that she took as her subjects decayed before the paintings were finished. The final pieces somehow managed to show the effects of time - a peach would appear to be simultaneously fresh and rotten.

When she switched to portraiture, she showed the same traits. She started work on a picture of her lover over thirty years ago and it is likely to remain uncompleted until either the sitter or the artist dies. People who have seen it say that, as with her still lifes, it captures the changes in her subject over time and that the lover's blossoming and gradual decline are caught, forever, on the canvas.