The Oasis

This painting continues my fascination with a remarkable desert scene in a little botanical garden in Santa Barbara and represents an amalgamation of my previous two paintings Desert Oasis and Enchanted Oasis. The striking composition which so attracted me to this scene in the first place is the same: the iconic tapestry of trees in the centre; the brilliant bursts of colour from the orange poker-shaped flowers; the clouds of magenta drifting across the scene from the aptly-named smoke bushes; the baby aloes sat like little statues in the foreground; and the sundrenched mountains towering above it all. But unlike the first two paintings, which were sketched at ground level looking up at the giant aloe trees, this one was sketched from my new vantage point sat on a little bench perched high above the extraordinary scene, which is what gives it its unique perspective. It truly was glorious and what a joy it was to paint!