Just for Fun

Something happens to us when we get in the water. We forget our age, our inhibitions, sometimes even the people watching. We splash, dive, float, laugh and play — often with the same abandon we had as children. Just for Fun was inspired by recent summers around the Mediterranean, but the observation behind it comes from a lifetime spent by the water. From childhood summers on the Black Sea to a decade around the North Sea, three years living in Asia, time in the Caribbean, and years spent travelling and swimming around the world, I’ve watched the same transformation happen again and again. Across cultures, languages and generations, water seems to level the playing field. Once we’re in it, many of the things that distinguish us on land begin to fall away. I wanted to hold onto one tiny piece of that feeling — the split second when a hand hits the surface and the splash explodes into the air. The swimmers are deliberately ambiguous. We don’t know their age, nationality, background or relationship to one another. The coastal landscape is equally elusive. France? Italy? Greece? The Caribbean? And is that soft light from an early morning swim or the end of a long summer day? The splash itself became the heart of the work: dozens of tiny, individually painted and hand-cut fragments suspended across an expanse of blue sea. Something that exists for barely a millisecond is suddenly frozen — all that movement, energy, spontaneity and joy held in one frame. No reason. No purpose. Just for fun.