Tactile Sky

Scott Naismith builds his skies with a palette knife rather than a brush, which is why the clouds here look like they were spread on with a spatula. Slabs of magenta and hot pink sit next to blocks of yellow and cream, each one left with a hard edge where the blade lifted away. The paint is genuinely thick, and the title is a nod to that: a sky you could reach out and touch. Down at the bottom, the horizon line sits low and dark, giving the sun's reflection room to spill across the wet sand in broken gold and turquoise patches.

Naismith is a Glasgow-based painter who trained at the Glasgow School of Art, and his subject is almost always the Scottish coast, especially the west and the islands. He is open about pushing colour well past what a camera would record, working from the idea that we experience light emotionally as much as we see it accurately. Scotland's weather helps: fast-moving cloud and long low sunsets give him plenty of raw material. Look at the cooler grey and violet band running along the left side, holding back the heat of the centre. Without it the whole thing would tip into sweetness, and that balancing act is the real work in a painting like this.