Julia’s Garden is in the Carmel Valley in California. It was a cold foggy day on the coast, but just a couple of miles inland it was a perfect sunny and warm day in May at Julia's garden. There are rows of vegetables and flowers and grass and weeds looking overwhelmingly complex. But I have a propensity lately for seeing through hopelessly unclear situations and forcing sense and order into them. I try to forget what objects are before me and instead see shapes and color and light. Stroke by stroke, my brush transforms the space I see onto the canvas. I am never completely happy with my paintings until months later, and sometimes not then. But usually, time makes the eye forgiving and the mind accepting.

It is a privilege to be able to paint and to make the paint do what I want it to do. I made this painting during the first day of the Carmel Plein Air Festival. On the second day of the festival, I returned to Julia's garden and made the painting called "Julia’s Orchard."  Kathleen Elsey