Le Caveau, Gigondas, Provence

The twisting plane tree that fills the middle of this painting is doing most of the work. Its trunk is built from ribbons of grey, green and blue that curl around each other like rope, and the leaves above scatter into little flat shapes of lime and emerald against patches of sky. Behind it sits a sun-baked ochre building with sapphire shutters, a white ironwork balcony, and a hand-lettered sign over the doorway reading "Caveau". Geraniums blaze red at the bottom right, café chairs wait in the shade at the left, and everything is painted in confident blocks of colour with almost no blending.

Gigondas is a small hillside village in the Vaucluse, in southern France, known mainly for its robust red wines made largely from Grenache grapes. A "caveau" is a tasting cellar, and the one on the village square is run collectively by the local growers, so visitors can try bottles from dozens of estates in a single room. Jennifer Irvine, a Scottish painter who travels regularly through France, Italy and Spain, works in this flattened, high-colour manner that owes something to the Post-Impressionists and to the Scottish Colourists before her. The composition is deliberately crowded, with the tree blocking a clear view of the building, which is exactly what happens when you stand on a village square in July.