Time, at the heart of this collection, is a theme that has long fascinated me and occupies an essential place in my work. After exploring it at length in my philosophy master’s thesis, I felt the need to continue this reflection in a different way, through painting, where words were no longer sufficient.
This series, composed of six canvases, extends this reflection through the prism of love.
Because time is precisely what cannot be held back, what cannot be controlled, in a world driven towards hyperproductivity and hyperperformance. Moments of love, by their very nature, can only be lived. No sooner do they arise than they already belong to the past. It is this fragility that I sought to explore in this collection, approaching love as a succession of suspended, irreversible moments, almost like islands outside the world and outside of time.
Each painting attempts to capture a fragment of these moments. The beauty of love, the way it unfolds over time, but also its silent pain, its sweetness, its tenderness and its nostalgia.
The title of the collection, Le Temps d'aimer (A Time to Love ), is taken from a line in a song by Charles Aznavour that I particularly like, Le Temps (Time) : "Le temps passé, celui qui va naître, le temps d’aimer, et de disparaître." ("Time gone by, time yet to be born, the time to love, and to fade away.")
At the Dawn of Dusk
The first painting, At the Dawn of Dusk, evokes a beginning, but a beginning that already comes after something. In a field of poppies, a woman stands still, calm. She seems pensive, as if inhabited by a pain or a memory. We don't know precisely what she feels. Is it regret, nostalgia, relief, or a mixture of all these?
This work opens the collection like an inaugural note, gentle, melancholic, and vibrant. It sets the tone. A fragile light, imbued with nostalgia. It is a painting of waiting and silence, but also of that fleeting moment when one feels in harmony with the world, in peace, serenity, and gentleness, just before it begins to turn again.
The Time of a Love
The second painting, The Time of a Love, represents love in its purest form. The euphoria and joy of the beginnings, the tenderness, the sweetness, and the illusion that it will be a long, calm river, free of obstacles.
Two lovers drift through a golden forest, carried away by the current of their love. The scene evokes those suspended moments, those timeless islands we wish could last forever, as if, for a fleeting instant, the entire world faded away around us. As if nothing else mattered but the presence of the beloved, as if the world ceased, for a moment, to exist around us.
It is this parallel world, accessible only to lovers, that I have tried to depict on the canvas. There they are, alone in this boat, and nothing else exists. They drift gently toward an infinite horizon. Why "The Time of a Love" ? Because the painting speaks precisely of that time, a time that cannot be measured, that cannot be held back, and yet, that contains everything.
Such a Lovely Bride
The next painting is much more bitter. It brings us back to reality. A bride, beautiful as she is, doesn't seem to experience the joy that love promises, especially on such a special day. She stands for a moment apart from the festivities, alone under a lamppost at the foot of a staircase. The only thing we can be sure of is that she is waiting. Is it before? Is it after? It doesn't matter.
What is she feeling? It's not necessarily sadness; is it doubt, a flash of lucidity, a slight regret, or something else entirely?
This painting speaks of disillusionment. I painted a bride, but this feeling doesn't belong exclusively to her. It's that strange moment when everything should be perfect: you're surrounded by people, the sun is shining, you're laughing, you have what you've always wanted, or what you thought you wanted. And yet, something is missing.
It's this gap between what one feels and what one should feel that I wanted to represent. This woman doesn't live up to expectations, and perhaps even worse, to her own expectations. This "lovely bride" doesn't feel lovely on this day.
The Time Gone By
In the next painting, we find our couple who were once adrift in a boat. Now they sit side by side, embracing on a bench, still suspended in that timeless moment.
What's different? That little figure playing by the lake: their grandchild, both a symbol of a love that has endured through time, but also one that has been passed on to their children's children.
From the boat, image of tender and fragile beginnings, to this bench, imbued with serenity and maturity, the path before them tells of all they have lived together, the joys as well as the trials, that brought them here, and all that they still have to share.
The palette echoes that of the first painting, yet in deeper, richer tones, as if the colors themselves had crossed the years. For here, time erases nothing: it amplifies, it enriches, it makes it last. "The Time Gone By" thus evokes both memory and the very passage of time: the time that holds, the time that carries away, the time that heals. And if the sun seems to be setting, it still illuminates their love, which will survive long after they're gone.
After you
The painting "After You" concludes the collection.
It is a painting of absence. Of the moment just after love, and of what it leaves behind. No one is present, and yet a presence is felt. Heavy in its silence and solemnity: that of those who were still there moments earlier. The place feels haunted by memory.
I did not want to paint the argument or the separation, but the emptiness left behind. An inhabited emptiness, where objects speak more than faces, and where the place becomes the sole guardian of the memory of what has just faded.
Souvenir
These five works form the heart of the collection "Le Temps d'aimer " (A Time to Love). One painting joins them as an extension. A simple bouquet, composed of lilies, roses, ranunculus, peonies, and tulips. My favorite flowers.
Nothing extraordinary at first glance. And yet, it is often in these modest gestures that love leaves its most beautiful mark. This painting captures the fragile softness of what once existed, of what one tries to hold onto even when one knows it cannot last, like flowers destined to wither.
It joins the collection like an “after,” which was nevertheless present all along. Each work seeks to grasp a different moment of love. Here, it is neither waiting, nor encounter, nor doubt, nor rupture, but what remains afterward: memory. That which, at any moment, through a voice, a smile, a scent, or a color, can suddenly resurface and bring us back to what once was.
The bouquet then becomes the embodiment of memory, of tthe evanescence of love and of the discreet marks it leaves behind. It pays tribute to what mattered, even when those things can no longer exist anywhere but within us.
Together, this body of work tells the story of my relationship with time and love. My doubts, my dreams, and my hopes. Each canvas carries a part of me that I hope will resonate with you.
0 comments