Don't mind about pumpkins and bairin breac. On Hallowe'en night this week there were persimmons and plums, quinces and mangosteens, cabbages and courgettes displayed on canvas at the Jorgensen Fine Art gallery. It's teatime and everyone's mouth is watering. They could eat the pictures.
Artist Dale Pring MacSweeney is delighted. Her theme was to paint "different courses" at a meal. Her work also features greengage apples, bacon, herrings, oysters, strawberries and cheeses. All based on real life ingredients, she says the "Montgomery Cheddar" alone cost £100.
She greets her friend, Richard Ryan, Irish ambassador to the UN, who is watching for his Korean wife, Heeun Ryan, to arrive. "We don't really live in New York," he explains. "It's more a quadrant of obsession down on the East River called the UN."