Windswept Orange Tree Above a Red Cyclo — Print & Oil Painting

The leaves have left the branches and that is the subject. Dozens of them are travelling across the middle of this wide canvas in open air, each a separate orange or scarlet dab set well clear of any twig, and they all lean the same way. The canopy at the left is combed in the same direction, its foliage pulled out to the right in long trailing masses, and the whole upper half of the picture reads as one gust caught partway through.

The tree that is shedding them stands hard against the left edge on a dark trunk, and it has been given roughly a third of the surface. Nothing balances it on the other side except architecture, which is why the composition feels as though it is tipping.

The two cyclos in the middle distance are the reddest objects present. Their hoods are folded back and their bench seats are upholstered in a hot scarlet that appears nowhere else at that strength, and because they sit at the centre of a broad pale road they read as two bright blocks in an otherwise grey space. One driver in blue is up on the saddle; the other cyclo waits empty beside him.

The road is wet and it has been left deliberately thin. Grey, lilac and cream are scraped across it with the leaves scattered on top, and short broken verticals beneath each figure serve as reflection. It is the emptiest part of the canvas and it occupies the entire lower centre.

The right side is crowded instead. Houses in ochre and grey carry masses of lilac, white and violet blossom over their walls, and beneath them two vendors work bicycles heaped with orange and cream flowers, one in a conical hat and blue jacket at the centre, one in green at the right edge. Part of our Vietnam collection, near a cyclist with flowers riding through a golden autumn street and cyclos and flower laden bicycles beneath a bright canopy.