Absence

Oil on panel

51cm x 41cm

During our visit to the Écomusée d’Alsace in France this summer, an open-air museum much like St Fagans here in Wales, I was drawn to this quiet interior.

Two empty chairs, an old chest, a few pictures on the wall and the afternoon light falling through a window.

There was something about the room that stayed with me. A sense of lives lived, of conversations once had, of people who had occupied these chairs and gone about their ordinary daily routines.

As I painted it, I wanted to capture more than simply the light and the space. I wanted to suggest the presence of those who are no longer there, without knowing who they might have been.

I’ve called it Absence.

Sometimes the most powerful stories are those left untold, expressed in the language of silence