Two Cyclists Riding Through a Sunlit Autumn Forest Tunnel — Print & Oil Painting

The light has been painted on top of everything else. Broad translucent diagonals of pale cream and grey run down from the upper centre toward the right, crossing trunks, leaves and path alike with no regard for what lies beneath them, laid on last and left visible as strokes. They are the reason the wood looks lit rather than merely coloured.

Under them the canopy is built from separate dabs in scarlet, rust, orange, ochre and a stubborn green, dense enough to close the top of the picture completely except for one small pale opening at the centre where the light comes from. No sky is shown anywhere else.

The trunks are the structure. Slim, dark and very nearly vertical, they stand at every depth from the front edge back to the vanishing point, thickening toward both sides until the left and right margins are almost barred over. Their spacing is what builds the tunnel the title names.

The path runs up the middle in warm ochre and dull gold, scattered with fallen leaves along its lower half, and it narrows steadily as it goes back. Two cyclists ride away from us on it, small and set low in the frame, both in white ao dai and pale conical hats, one with a dark basket at the front of her machine.

They are the only white in the picture and they sit exactly where the light lands, which is the whole composition stated in one arrangement. From our Vietnam collection, near ao dai students walking beneath a green tree canopy and two travellers walking a golden birch lined path in autumn.