A golden umbrella tree glows amidst the darker foliage of pungas and spindly manuka. We are drawn to its other-worldly luminescence, its mystery. How do you paint light? Or the pulse of life in plants. Or the journey your eye and mind make as they take your senses back through these places, so that your inner skin brushes against leaf and bark and soil sticks to your bare feet. We synthesise and photosynthesize. Colours zing off each other and hum; adjacent contrasts blend and develop not on the canvas, but in our minds. Objects, studied at length, begin to dialogue through space and time. Just as artists do across something described in other centuries as the ether. - Excerpt from ‘Last Summer’ by Andrea Hotere. For the full essay please visit our website. Pictured: ‘Yellow Tree’ and ‘By the Path’ 2022, Oil on Board, Private Collections #melaniemillsart #nzpainting #oilpainting #painting 📸: @samuel_hartnett