PHILAE TEMPLE

Watercolor on paper.

30x21 cm.

From the Egypt series.

It is a very hot afternoon despite being winter, something that caught my attention in Egypt, because if it were like that I could not imagine what summer is like in that place. The light enters and breaks the shapes of the columns and lintels of the temple on the island, as if the entire structure succumbed to a solar ray after having stood for millennia, withstanding the passage of years and centuries. It is a moment of light that I tried to take with me, simply an impact on the retina. I took a photograph, even though I do not like to do it very much because photos distract, they do not allow us to observe and we miss the moment; a unique moment in the life of someone who visits a totally exotic and foreign country. But I wanted to take that moment of light with me so that later, on my easel, I could reflect it in a few brushstrokes. I wanted to make a synthetic, quick and fleeting work, like the light that marks the retina of the eye and remains in the memory forever. I took the photo with some guilt, the guilt of feeling that I was missing a unique moment just by looking through the camera lens. "A second less is a second less," I thought, but I took the photo and now I can say that I do not regret it. Because I still had the time to observe, and I can say that between the observation of nature, the photo and now this work I was able to close the story.