A past master at spotting surfaces in nature that can effectively serve as canvases for his art, Strijdom noticed this field of hard plants that take on an almost silvery appearance this time of the year. Just as the work was complete the moon rose from behind the mountain that was already in the frame – a serendipity creating a beautiful end point for the rising left-to-right line made by the ridge of the sunlit mountain, which in turn was the perfect counterpoint to Strijdom’s receding golden line, leading the eye from foreground to the start of the mountain’s gentle diagonal. Sunset is so late this time of the year that by the time I had finished packing up, there was just under an hour left to get back to Cape Town – which I had to achieve to comply with lockdown curfew, at the time requiring us to be off the roads by 9 pm; managed to get back to my spot in the parking garage with only minutes to spare. A few months later the silver plants had turned an unusable brown, and the canvas was gone.