What the Dark Was Closing Around (Series)

Enchanted Spaces
Mixed Media (oil on canvas), 2024 
40 x 30 cm (16 x 12 inches) 

Flowers gather at the forest’s edge as evening deepens, their colour briefly held across three panels against encroaching shadow.

This triptych continues the exploration begun in The Colour That Made Me Stay, moving further into evening as the final traces of daylight recede. Residual light lingers against deepening shadow, held in the saturated colour of flowers gathered at the forest’s edge. Whether shaped by the last reach of the sun or the early presence of moonlight, the scene remains poised between glow and withdrawal. 

Each panel is built through layered applications of modelling paste, acrylic, and oil paint, unified by a dark, transparent ground of oil and linseed that has been partially wiped back to reveal what lies beneath. Cooler tones of green and blue dominate the surface, forming a dense nocturnal field from which colour emerges selectively. Depth is established through uncovering rather than accumulation, as though light is drawn forward from within the darkness. 

Against this surrounding field, the flowers in the foreground hold greater clarity and saturation. Their forms remain soft, their colour concentrated, set forward against the weight of the space behind them. The contrast does not resolve, but holds steady, allowing the scene to remain open as the light continues to shift. 

The three panels function together as a single work, bound by a shared atmosphere rather than a fixed setting. What persists across them is the interval itself — the brief span in which colour remains visible as evening settles further into the scene.