Midsummer In The Mind

Midsummer in the Mind is a golden wildflower meadow held between memory and imagination. A dark ridge of pines anchors the top of the canvas, and below it a lone figure stands in the middle of the field, small against the glow of layered yellows, at the end of a faint path. Lilac, pink and coral blooms rise through the foreground, as if the meadow were spilling toward you.

The figure is easy to miss at first, and that is the point. It gives the landscape a human scale and a quiet question: is this a place someone is walking through, or one they are remembering? The painting is about the height of summer, when everything is in bloom and you already know it won't last.

I built the surface slowly, in layers. Broken patches of lighter and warmer tone show through the yellow, so the field seems to shimmer the way a real meadow does when the wind moves through it. In the foreground the paint becomes thicker and more tactile: short, textured strokes suggest the flowers rather than describing them one by one. Up close, it is texture and color. From a distance, it settles into a meadow, and the small figure appears.

The deep green of the pines gives the eye a place to rest and makes the light in the field feel even brighter.

This is an original, one-of-a-kind painting, painted by hand in my studio in Spain. It will bring warmth and light, and a little mystery, to a living room, bedroom, office or any space that needs a window onto a summer field.