Coastal Garden

Amber Gittins painted "Coastal Garden" in 2010 using hundreds of soft, curving brushstrokes that pile up like petals and leaves stirred by the wind. The colors do a lot of the work here, mixing creamy whites with sandy browns, ocean blues, and small flashes of gold. Together they capture the feel of a garden growing close to the shore, where flowers, salt air, and open sky all blur into one another.

Part of the fun is that nothing quite holds still. A shape might read as a blossom one moment and a rolling wave the next before dissolving back into pure color and texture. Gittins works in the spirit of gestural abstraction, a modern approach where the pleasure comes from motion and the way the paint feels rather than any exact scene. The result is calm and easy on the eyes, a piece that asks for nothing more than a relaxed, unhurried gaze.