Fragrances

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 19 September 2026, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm

This is from about two weeks ago when I began painting on smaller canvas boards which allow me to grasp the images faster. More compact, they’re better suited to painting the rapidly changing colours and they allow me to casually swipe paint across them with greater ease. I've made a dozen of them this week but this one particularly pleased me. 

Though this would not be for everyone, a fragile study like this seems to be what I'm after in this moment. The marvellously strange thing about it is that I couldn't have known I was after it until I painted this. (!)

This was the last study of the day and the sky appeared to be blushing with a delicate pink colour harmony. After a few years working here, I’ve come to see that these faint secrets overhead are what the sky gives away when it thinks no one else is looking. 

It’s at this fragrant moment when colour sails away like perfume diffusing into the night air. How many people could possibly imagine such intimate goings-on in the skies just above them? Not me until I began painting at this hour. How could I have known otherwise?

The weather has been cooperative so I’ve been out most evenings and the blooms are bold but short-lived. Nice.