Inviting seas, North Uist

Two thirds of this picture is beach, and most of that beach is a mirror. The tide has pulled far out across North Uist's shallow sand flats, leaving a wet film that catches the clouds and turns the ground into a second sky. Follow the pale pink and blue streaks running from the bottom right corner up to the horizon and you will see they are reflections, not sand ripples, which is why the shoreline is so hard to pin down. Only the thin dark strip of dunes and low hills on the left edge tells you where the land actually ends.

Nicola Wakeling is a contemporary British painter who works in a careful realist style, building up oils in thin layers to get the wet gleam and the exact colours of northern light. North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, is famous for beaches like this: shell sand that reads almost white, huge tidal ranges, and skies that change every few minutes. The title is a bit of gentle humour given how cold that water actually is. Her signature sits small and unfussy at the bottom, easy to miss, which fits a painting that keeps almost nothing in it apart from sand, water and weather.