Underneath the Tree, Everything Glows (Apples in July)

2025, oil on linen, 10 x 8 x 1.5 in, aluminum floater frame

You’re standing under a branch heavy with apples in midsummer, when the fruit is still young and the world feels full of possibility. The bright neon heat saturating the apples and leaves isn’t literal sunlight, but a way of showing the vibrancy running underneath ordinary moments. Electric purples and greens heighten the sense that something alive is pulsing through the scene—growth, anticipation, the quiet momentum of ripening.

The composition pulls your gaze up, into the canopy where light filters through leaves and turns the world briefly luminous. The tree becomes a kind of shelter, a witness to seasons and cycles, and the glowing fruit turns into a symbol of time’s fullness—sweetness not yet realized, but already on its way.

In still life traditions, fruit often stands in for abundance, desire, and transience—the reminder that what’s ripe today will soften tomorrow. Here, the apples hang in their threshold moment: just before picking, just before change, held for an instant in the bright certainty of now.