I painted this image quite quickly yesterday, and wanted to capture a bit of summer exuberance from a typical British country lane. It’s got quite a retro look to me, and reminds me of paintings from the 1960s.

The last couple of garden paintings I’ve done were quite meticulous and time- consuming. I wanted to do something different this week as I’m going away for a fortnight in two days’ time and I hate leaving a painting unfinished when I go away!

I’ll be in the U.K. for a week and then in a wonderful old farmhouse in France for a week so I hope to come back with lots of sketchbook work and ideas for new paintings 😀

Summer Shade Under the Oak Tree, acrylic on panel, 50 x 50 cm, 2019

There seems no end in sight to the glorious summer we’re having in Berlin this year, although the ferocious temperatures we had last month have, thankfully, subsided a bit.

Over the last couple of years I was busy with a day job in the UK and commuting to Berlin so there wasn’t much time to spend on painting. I’ve got the luxury of some free time now, though, and I’m enjoying painting gardens, and flowers. There’s so much going on with these images it’s great practice for deciding what to leave out.

This painting is of some deep shade under an oak tree , with alliums , euphorbias and Camassias.

It’s 29 degrees again today so I’ll be looking for some shade out there!