As I’m sure I’ve shared before, I love to observe the solstices and equinoxes in particular ways but the summer solstice has to be my favourite of them all; a high pinacle of light before the steady shortening of days. We particularly like to light fires and candles and sit outside till late in our garden around this central point of summer but its also become our family tradition to go for a sunset walk in one of the places that is special to us. The weather never seems to fail us on these occasions so that some of the most amber-hued photography in my vast collection (and some of the paintings that have spun out of it – think the Golden Hedgerow series) have resulted from this summer solstice ritual of mine.

This post isn’t going to be one of the wordy ones – instead, I thought I would let the pictures do most of the talking.

I mentioned the Golden Hedgerow series of paintings above – it wasn’t till I got home from our walk and went through the photos that I noticed the striking similarity between the sunset I’d just witnessed and these two paintings inspired by my walks at the height of last summer – here you go, side-by-side; spot the difference!

 You can see more views and close-ups of these two paintings at http://www.helenwhite.org