Sailing Places is an original oil painting on canvas measuring 85 x 120 cm by Victoria Horkan. The wide horizontal canvas is dark at the outer edges, deep olive green and near black pressing in like night falling, while at the centre a soft vertical column of light opens in pale blue, turquoise and misted white. Above and along the sides, curved strokes of vermilion, coral, rose and gold gather in thick arcs, crowding most densely in the lower corners and thinning as they rise, so the colour seems to part around the central glow. Below, shorter horizontal marks in teal, cobalt and bottle green pool and overlap, reading as calm water that reflects hints of the light above.

The title does a quiet piece of work. “Sailing Places” swaps the usual direction of travel, suggesting not a boat heading towards fixed destinations but places themselves moving through memory, drifting and returning. The luminous centre reads as a distant channel or horizon, a soft opening that draws the eye gently forward, while the plural “places” gathers up many journeys into one image. It connects to the travel that runs through Horkan’s practice, but where her storms and caves close in on the viewer, this painting opens outward and lets the gaze move slowly towards the light.

Horkan builds the surface in sculptural impasto, piling the canopy of colour into thick, curled palette knife marks that rise in low relief, while the central passage is kept thin, wiped and softened so it reads as haze rather than solid form.

Sailing Places is a unique, one-of-one large-format oil painting on canvas by Victoria Horkan, 120 x 85 cm. This work has been sold. To enquire about similar available works by Victoria Horkan, contact Eclectic Gallery in Fitzrovia, London.