Holding Hands by the Sea

Below: Holding Hands by the Sea I, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80 cm

A slightly macabre, ironico-sentimental painting. It belongs to the same series as His Great Love and Gale in the Trees (cf. earlier posts)... See below for two detailed views. Around the time when I painted this picture, I wrote the following in my diary:

One late-summer evening, we stopped at a place overlooking the sea, where the stone balustrade was covered with lovers' graffiti, some older, some more recent, all fading away unremittingly. Had we been foolish enough to inscribe our own names, they, too, would be fading away. And it strikes me that just as every corner of the world has at some time witnessed birth and at some time witnessed death, so every corner of the world has at some time heard the words of lovers, seen their smiles, their hands clasped and their lips touching. There is in every corner of the world an invisible detritus of bygone smiles, dying echoes of words, dreams unfulfilled. Everywhere around us are phantoms with lips grown cold, hands yearning to hold, clutching at emptiness. And the eyes that once stared long into yours, there by the sea, now stare out into the rain of a winter afternoon.

Right and below: Two details of Holding Hands...