Timeless - Big Fishes

A woman in a blue dress stands on a chequerboard terrace, looking out over a calm bay where three large, vividly striped fish float through the water as if gravity doesn't apply to them. Behind her, the garden is clipped into neat topiary cones and rounded shrubs in amber, terracotta and lavender. To the right, a Mediterranean-style house with a patterned tiled roof catches the afternoon light.

Evgeni Gordiets has a very particular way of painting: everything is rendered with quiet precision, yet the logic of the scene is pleasantly off. The fish are the size of boats. The trees have the stillness of sculptures. It sits somewhere between surrealism and a sun-warmed daydream, and the result is a picture you keep finding new corners in.

As a build, the chequerboard patio and the topiary sections give you good anchor points, but the sky, water and rocky outcrops in the mid-distance share similar blue-grey tones that will slow things down. The fish, thankfully, are anything but subtle: a good place to start.