Blossom

Pink blossom fills nearly every inch of this picture, pushing right to the top edge and out past both sides. Between the flowers, deep blue does the work usually given to sky, but it behaves more like a shape than a distance, cut into jagged pieces by branches and leaves. Underneath, a white picket fence runs across the garden, and a row of tulips stands at attention in front of it, their heads painted as simple pale blobs. The trunk and limbs are a dull violet grey, the only restrained thing in the whole composition, holding the riot of colour together like a frame.

Jennifer Irvine is a Scottish painter who works mostly in acrylic and gouache, often on gardens, flowers and still life arranged on tabletops. Her handling here owes something to the Scottish Colourists and to Post Impressionist painting more broadly: flat areas of strong colour, visible brushmarks, no attempt at photographic detail. The subject is one of the shortest lived sights in any garden, since cherry blossom lasts a couple of weeks at most before the wind takes it. Look for the dashes of orange and green scattered through the pink, small flecks that keep the mass of petals from turning into one solid block.