This canvas of a woodland grove was painted in the magical month of May. The colour palette draws on the use of contiguous complementary colours favoured by the Impressionists - the deep viridian greens of the dense undergrowth, for instance, against the purple of the bluebells and the paler tones of the sunlit area. Similarly, I followed their techniques with the brushtrokes, where short dabs of colour suggest the dappled light and merge together from a distance to create a carpet of shimmering intensity.

The composition particularly excites me. Walking in the wood I came upon it just as it is here. The tree in the left foreground is like a column to be circumvented before you can reach towards the pool of light beyond. It was like stumbling upon a secret wonderland.

It's also one of my larger canvases. I think a lot of its impact comes not just from its scale, though, but also from the apparent simplicity of the structures that form the image - the tree trunks that provide a vertical framework and the aquamarines and purples that create a horizontal flow leading the eye to the pool of sunlight in the centre.