Sunset over water

The photograph can't capture it, I don't know why I put it up there really, except as a kind of visual signifier of what I mean. It's something you almost need to paint to truly experience again, once the moment has passed. But a still painting would miss the fact that a sunset isn't a snapshot, it's a movie, a rolling film of colour, expanding and contracting, intensifying and softening over the screen of the sky.

This one was a huge angora blanket. The clouds were the texture of raw lambswool that we plucked from the grass a few hours before. The redness was like the glistening heart of a pomegranate, leaking rich juices over fingers and sleeves, bleeding into the water below. Not the pale imitation from the camera, too sensitive to light, not able to relax its retina in the face of such glorious colour.

The grenadine blanket stretched over the sky, dripped a colour even more intense into the lake, and filled everything, - not just the eyes, but the mind, the mouth, the stomach. A rich meal, satisfying, but always consumed with a tugging fear, the aching knowledge that too soon it would be finished.

The colour finally faded, like a fruit ice sucked out, leaving behind an astringent sweetness and a chill on the arms.