Texture Study V

Magenta clouds catch fire above a flat stretch of water, and the sun sits low enough that its light spills across the surface in broken bars of orange and pink. Scott Naismith built this scene almost entirely with a palette knife, dragging and pressing thick oil paint so the clouds have real ridges and edges you could feel with a fingertip. The title gives away the intent: it is one of a series in which he set out to test what happens when paint is applied in slabs rather than strokes, letting the material itself do some of the describing.

Naismith is a Scottish painter based near Glasgow, and his subject is usually the west coast and the Hebrides, where weather changes by the minute and the light can go from grey to blazing in the space of a walk. He talks about being interested in atmospheric conditions more than particular places, which is why his skies often tip into pure colour. The pinks and hot magentas here are pushed well past anything you would photograph, though anyone who has watched a sunset over Skye will recognise the impulse.

Worth noticing: the horizon is barely there, just a dark band, and the strip of turquoise and green at the bottom does most of the work in telling you this is water and land rather than more sky. Without those few cool marks, the whole thing would read as abstraction.