Statement:

My Cap Ferret still lifes represent an apparent hiatus. 

The lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic were of course an exceptional phenomenon, and for many people, artists or not, were a time of quiet reflection, of greater introspection and intimacy (or anxiety, anguish, at worst tragedy) than usual.

In my case, a friend’s mother agreed to allow me and a small group of close friends to escape to the seaside villa she’d built for herself and her children in the 60s, set among pine trees on a strip of land between the ocean and a lagoon, south of Bordeaux, in France.///

The weather, during this first lockdown, was unwaveringly beautiful, and the ocean light was superb, bringing out sharp details and colours. 

Isolated in this former family getaway, taking turns to cook, walking over the dunes, making our own amusements, spending quiet evenings around the wood fire… the six of us developed a closeness and intimacy we’d seldom known before. 

It was a magical, almost mystical experience, an idyll.

But we knew that at the same time, Madame B., who had loaned us her family’s holiday home, was dying, and during lockdown, she passed away. 

We were unable, with COVID restrictions, to attend her funeral, but were able to join her descendents when they deposited her ashes in the local cemetery, before ‘breaking the spell’ and scattering as lockdown was lifted.