The collar watch

Two aged hands spread out against a gray-beige background streaked with long white drips, as if time itself were trickling down the canvas. Meticulously painted, they capture every crease, every vein, every age spot, an almost sculptural rendering of skin worn by the years. Between the fingers of the upper hand, a thin chain slips out and falls toward the second hand held out below, in a gesture suspended between giving and holding back, between offering and remembrance. Here, only the painting carries the memory. The motif of the pendant, a watch my grandmother wore constantly around her neck, becomes the invisible thread running through the work, that tenuous link between the two hands that seems to both pass on and slip away. *La Montre de Col* is thus a direct and intimate tribute, where the texture of the skin and the delicacy of this suspended gesture take center stage, poised between legacy and disappearance.