Serene Grey

A wedge of hot pink, coral and orange sits at the center of this sky, built up in thick slabs of paint that catch real light on the surface. Everything else is grey and mauve, spread thin and smooth, so the eye has nowhere else to go. Below, a low horizon of wet sand and shallow water repeats the fire in softer form, smeared downward as if the reflection is dissolving. The title promises grey, and grey is what most of the canvas delivers, with the color arriving as a narrow band you could cover with your thumb.

The painter is Scott Naismith, a Scottish artist based near Glasgow who trained at the Glasgow School of Art. His subject is almost always the weather over the Scottish landscape, particularly Skye, Glencoe and the lochs, and he works in a semi-abstract way with a palette knife rather than fine brushes, pushing paint around in broad strokes and letting the ridges stay visible. Naismith has spoken about being interested in how light behaves as it passes through cloud and moisture, and that interest shows here in the way the bright patch seems to be burning a hole through the overcast rather than sitting on top of it. His small signature is tucked into the lower right, easy to miss against the pale sand.