Marée Basse (courants II) 1986

Gilles Aillaud made this painting, Marée Basse, with what looks like oil on canvas, and it's all about capturing a scene in flux. The palette is muted, mostly yellows and blues, kind of like seeing the beach on a day when the sun is playing hide-and-seek. What gets me is how Aillaud handles the paint. Look at the ripples in the sand; they’re not just painted, they’re built up, almost like he's sculpting the texture of the beach right onto the canvas. You can almost feel the dampness of the sand. The way the light catches those ridges makes the whole scene shimmer, giving you the sense that everything is constantly changing, settling, and being reshaped by the water. It reminds me a bit of Gerhard Richter’s seascapes. There’s that same sense of trying to catch something fleeting, to paint not just what you see, but how it feels to be there, watching the world change in front of you. For Aillaud, it's like saying that nothing ever stands still, and maybe that's the beauty of it all.