"Gracefull Escape"

To paint the woodcock is, for me, an attempt to hold one's breath. Those who walk the autumn woods know that cardiac lurch when the 'belle' bursts from underfoot.

In this painting, I did not want to paint a bird, but the pure adrenaline of the encounter. The bird is caught in full flight, the tail feathers spread and the bill pointing along its line of escape.

The composition of the painting rests on a balance between force and dynamism. The tree trunk on the left, with its gold-leafed branches, serves as a solid, vertical anchor. It creates a natural frame that literally projects the bird into the empty space on the right. This diagonal of flight, initiated by the movement of the wings and extended by the woodcock's long bill, gives an immediate sensation of speed.

The vivid, almost electric yellow of the beech leaves in the foreground contrasts with the cold, muted blue of the mist that envelops the forest. This palette of grey-blues and faded mauves in the background is not merely an aesthetic choice: it symbolises the space of freedom into which the bird is about to vanish. The light strikes the top of the wing like a piece of sky.

The woodcock is here only a silhouette in passing. The title evokes both its success in escaping our gaze and the luck we have, as observers, to seize that fraction of a second. This is not only the portrait of an animal — it is the portrait of a moment that has already ceased to exist by the time we look at it.