I tried to paint over them three times. They stayed anyway.

Some things about a walk refuse to leave you. The light does something unexpected. A colour appears where it has no business being — too warm, too insistent, too alive against the pale restraint of everything else.

This painting came from exactly that kind of moment on the East Lothian coast. The sky was doing what East Lothian skies do — vast, layered, quietly dramatic. And then the shoreline broke into something I didn't expect. Rust and orange and warmth, right where the cool blues thought they had the whole canvas to themselves.

I painted over those marks. They came back. So I stopped fighting them and let them stay. That's when the painting became itself.

At 80 × 70 cm, The Orange Marks Stayed holds a whole weather system in its layering. The pale, luminous sky pulls the eye up and out. The horizon sits quiet and steady. And then those orange marks arrive — unexpected, insistent, completely necessary. In a room, this painting creates the particular feeling of watching light change over water. You'll see something different in it every time.

I've learned to trust the marks that come back. In painting and in life, what refuses to be covered over is usually the truest thing.

Original. One of a kind. This painting has found its home.

Details:

• Medium: Mixed media on canvas

• Size: 80 × 70 cm

• Framing: Framed

• Status: Sold

• Certificate of authenticity included