Description

It was a fiercely hot afternoon as I passed through the frankly underwhelming gates to Guillotière cemetery. The sun sapped every ounce of energy my legs possessed and still asked for more, each step a leaden weight.

The imposing walls of the cemetery cut off the racket of the dusty summer road and left only the idling of a lone grey vehicle to interrupt the sudden peace. A mechanical heartbeat in a dead place.

Green remerged. Crows and jackdaws spoke in their graveyard tongues and the effort to move forward was eased. I stopped in the shadow of a twisted oak, in the shade of which I found the subject of this painting, a face of quiet grief, hands betraying a deeper hurt within.

The blue stone fit perfectly to a salmon background, with scatterings of detail scrawled across its surface, fragments of a story long forgotten, from a tomb empty of flowers.

Acrylic and pencil on A4 (21cm x 30cm) panel.