Garden Light when Summer meets Summer Garden

This painting titled ‘Garden Light’ is all about that magical hour when a hot summer afternoon tips into evening. The sky's doing its thing with those peachy-coral tones, and meanwhile your garden is still absolutely lush and green because it's been drinking in sunshine all day. It's that gorgeous contrast between the warm sunset glow and the cool, deep greens of foliage that just hits differently.

I've built this one up in layers that let the light move through the painting the way it moves through leaves. Because that's what gets me about being in a garden at sunset on a warm summer evening in Melbourne. Everything's translucent and glowing. The coral-orange flowers catching that last bit of light, the way green looks almost luminous when the sun's low. It's not about painting what you see literally—it's about capturing that feeling of being absolutely wrapped up in color and warmth and life.

The beauty of working in layers like this is you get depth. The layers add real atmospheric quality where you feel like you could step into the painting and smell the warm earth and the flowers. Each glaze adds another dimension, another temperature of color, another memory of a perfect summer evening.

This is a big one too—73 x 73 cm—so it's got presence. It's the kind of piece that brings that outdoor summer magic indoors, especially when we're stuck in the grey months and need reminding that lush, warm, color-drenched evenings are actually real and will come back around.

If you've ever stood in a garden at sunset and thought "I want to bottle this feeling," well, that's what I was after with Garden Light. Pure summer bliss on canvas. Garden Light is available as an original painting on Blue Thumb.