By midsummer, my garden becomes a layered, abundant, knotted tapestry of shape and colour. A single dahlia in full bloom provided the catalyst for this painting, its saturated crimson petals rising above a richly woven community of grasses, perennials and the first architectural seed heads formed by the season's heat. Rather than isolating individual flowers, I was interested in the rhythm of the whole, where every stem, leaf and bloom exists in quiet dialogue with its neighbour. Painted instinctively, the composition embraces the vitality of a naturalistic garden, allowing gesture, line and colour to mirror its layered complexity, where beauty is found not in individual flowers, but in the conversations between them.

Oil & graphite on textured paper. 30 w x 42 h cm (Framed in antique frame 42.5 w x 53 h cm)