Daffodil Pickers, West Cornwall, 2021

This early morning painting shows two daffodil pickers, backs bent and eyes trained on the ground before them, the vanguard of the changing seasons. The sun is just above the horizon, lighting the sky to daffodil-yellow, but the plants themselves are obscured, the dew of the previous night still rising into mist around the workers. Even the strong outlines of the figures are partially obscured by the soft, shifting washes of blue and yellow, which shade into the warm earth tones of the distant hill.

This is a quintessential Cornish scene: the county is the world’s largest producer of daffodils which flower here before anywhere else and are eagerly exported; for a few weeks a year, Cornish daffodils flood the world with their vibrant promise of spring.