ARTIST’S FRUITY MIX

Press, 2 May 1981, Page 17

ARTIST’S FRUITY MIX

Of Cabbages and Things.... By Shona McFarlane. Whitcoulls, 1980. Colour plates and illustrations. 95 pp. $14.95

(Reviewed.by

Barry Holland)

Sometimes, on stage, artists are pelted with fruit and vegetables. Artist, television ; personality, and wife of a Cabinet Minister, • Shona McFarlane reverses the procedure on her readers in “Of Cabbages and Things ...” Many of the paintings and a good deal of the writing in this pot pourri feature fruit and vegetables — almost, but not quite, too often. The author has good reasons for devoting a big chunk of her book to horticultural produce for she genuinely loves it and furthermore, oranges inspired her to paint again after a cancer operation some years ago. So the book features many 'of her paintings, covering a variety of subjects and in different styles, with paintings of the produce carried out with a bold brush and sometimes heavy outlines. She writes about it with a light touch. There are people as well as pumpkins in her book and ShOna McFarlane rubs shoulders with celebrities and eccentrics. Recalling the former she does everything from sing “Auld Lang Syne” with Joan Sutherland to spill wine, on actor Louis Jourdian.

A lively raconteur, the author is down-to-earth yet sensitive, too when the occasion requires it, cheerfully irreverent as she sees the funny as well as the phoney side of the pompous on some V.I.P. occasions, and above all she is entertaining. . Her “Beauty and The Beast” television faris. may find less about this programme than they would have hoped, but there should be other compensations for them. Only the’most sour readers would: find they cannot laugh along with Shona McFarlane; her well-produced book is easy to dip into. She cooks up a bright and breezy medley, even with all those vegetables.