Remote Garden arrives with a different energy than anything Stoop has shown before. Where his previous works — The Unknown, Presence, Refuge — propose fields of sustained contemplation, Remote Garden erupts with something closer to joy. It is the most populated canvas in his recent practice: a black figure with white eyes occupies the lower left, a great vortex dominates the centre, a teal river flows downward through the composition, and above it all, an explosion of orange, green, red and blue marks scatter like seeds in wind.

The title is precise and paradoxical. A garden is cultivated, located, known. A remote garden is none of these things — it exists at the edge of what can be found. Stoop places his inner world there: boundless, vibrant, impossible to map. The painting does not depict this garden; it is the garden, in the moment of its unfolding.

What strikes me most is the tonal range. The grey-gold ground — textured, almost metallic — holds together an extraordinary chromatic field. Nothing clashes. Everything coexists. This is the mark of a painter who has learned to trust the process absolutely.

The work emerges from an intuitive, almost irrational process of dialogue between the act of painting and the shifting state of being. Stoop encounters his inner world as a boundless, vibrant garden — a place that cannot be named or located, only sensed. A garden that unfolds through poetic intensity, dramatic tension, and an irresistible, immersive beauty.

The black figure in the lower left is new in Stoop’s vocabulary — a presence, almost a self-portrait, watching from within the garden. Its white eyes give it an uncanny directness. It is both the artist and the viewer, inside the work and looking out.

Remote Garden is Stoop’s first major work of 2026 — and it suggests a new chapter: more open, more populated, more willing to let the world in. It is a painting that contains multitudes, and rewards sustained attention with sustained discovery.