In the Pink

St Michael's Mount is instantly recognisable, but on this particular evening it had been transformed. Illuminated in pink beneath an evening sky carrying its own subtle blush of colour, it became an irresistible subject for The Colour of Night.

What interested me wasn't simply that St Michael's Mount had been lit pink. It was the relationship between the artificial colour and the last natural light in the sky.

This brief period between day and night has always fascinated me. The landscape hasn't quite disappeared into darkness, the first lights are beginning to make themselves known, and for a short time natural and man-made light exist together.

Years after St Michael's Mount had featured in my very first nightscape experiment, In the Pink showed just how far that fascination had developed.

The painting also became the subject of my first Painters Online Studio video tutorial, Atmospheric Night Skies, following the process from the first layers of the evening sky through to the finished painting.

And there was one final connection with that very first Mount nightscape: when I released In the Pink, the original sold that same evening.