‘The Russian Hut’ Oil on canvas was shown in The Gallery throughout 2016 and into 2017. The text accompanying it read:

‘Though this is a partly imaginary image, ‘The Russian Hut’ actually exists on the tiny island of Solskaer in the outer archipelago off Helsinki, Finland (see my blog of 15 July, 2015, which is illustrated by a photograph showing the hut right centre as viewed from the top of the lighthouse).  The four-sided object in the middle of the painting is based on a stack of logs which sat there, and the white triangle, right, was suggested by a small fir tree which had somehow managed to grow out of the rock. The boat on its side to the left, however, and the path and windows do not exist.

It was a breezy, brilliantly bright sunny day when I visited so the celestial circle ought to be the sun; it is nevertheless unambiguously a bright moon illuminating the scene on a clear, black-blue night. The image, which began as a study of the hut as drawn and photographed, went through several transformations before emerging rather as a composition of white light (pressed to be as white as possible by using layers of the very best Michael Harding Titanium oil paint!). It was a very enjoyable painting to paint, and I suspect another one or two may emerge from Solskaer simply because the quality of the light that day, on a light-grey, virtually bare rock in the middle of a white-flecked sea under a cloudless sky, was unforgettable.’