Deep in a gorge where the trees close overhead, there is a pool that only the light seems to know about. Late in the morning the sun finds its way through the canopy, and long golden beams slant down through the mist, falling across the water like curtains drawn halfway open.
On the left, a slender waterfall pours from a lip of honey-coloured rock. It is not loud or dramatic, just a single white ribbon falling straight down, breaking into spray where it meets the pool. The rock around it is warm umber and gold, streaked with moss and hung with ferns that tremble in the moving air.
The pool itself is a clear, cool turquoise, deepening to green toward the middle. Its surface is calm enough to hold reflections of the trees and the light, broken only by the soft ripples spreading from the falls. A few amber leaves float on it, early signs of autumn, turning slowly as they drift toward the edge.
Mossy boulders crowd the banks, rounded and soft as cushions, and ferns spill over them in feathery green sprays. On the right, tall trunks rise out of the frame, their bark dark and damp, and between them the forest disappears into a glowing haze of green and gold.
The painting is built in thin, luminous glazes in the old classical manner, layer upon layer of transparent colour that lets the light seem to come from inside the paint. The shadows are deep and warm, the highlights soft, and the whole scene has the hush of a place that has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.