Inspiration often comes to me from many sources but this is the first time I have painted a scene inspired by a novel. The novel had a visually arresting description of a street corner in New York on a July afternoon, when the low and damp sky looked as if it was about to give way to rain. A bus was likened to a fish’s flashing silver belly, and a young woman appeared in a raincoat, humming a tune as she looked up at the heavy sky. I was intrigued by a merger of the sky and the sea juxtaposed against urban scenery. To represent the shimmer of water, I used thin, irregular brush strokes to impart texture and added blotchy pools of color at the base of objects to depict distorted reflections.