50 x 70 cm

Acrylic on canvas

Unframed

The Garden Takes Him In belongs to the more playful closing group of the gallery: six paintings where bodies, flowers, birds, trees and strange visitors seem to share the same unruly life force.

Here, a small red male figure stands with arms raised inside a blue pool of energy, surrounded by looping pink blossoms, pale blue birds or petals, and a dense green garden. The figure is naked, but not exposed in a tragic or vulnerable way. He appears claimed by the garden - held, circled, celebrated, almost absorbed into its strange floral movement.

The painting has a joyful, childlike directness, but it also carries a queer charge: the male body is place inside a world of colour, pleasure, nature and transformation. It feels like a private ritual of acceptance, where the garden itself becomes companion, audience and shelter.

Placed within the final six works, this painting continues the movement toward joy, mischief, innocence and queer enchantment.