Afternoon by the swimming pool by Pierre Benjamin
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Oil on panel canvas
Dimensions: 41 x 51 cm
Year: 2026
Price: $250.00 USD
Status: available
In creating this piece, I wanted to capture the joy and vibrancy that summer brings into my life. Living in a place where rain often dominates, the arrival of summer feels like a long-awaited embrace. The strawberries, bursting with color, symbolize the refreshing sweetness that contrasts so sharply with the dreariness of winter. Their vivid reds are a celebration of warmth and renewal. The interplay of light and shadow in the painting mirrors the crisp, clear sunlight that I cherish during these months. I chose to use bold, lively colors to evoke the sensation of sunlight dancing across a table, bringing everything to life. The lemons add a zesty brightness, enhancing the feeling of freshness and the promise of long, sunlit days. I hope that when you view this piece, you feel the same uplifting spirit that summer brings to me. It's a reminder of the simple pleasures that can transform our mood and environment, offering a slice of sunshine even on the cloudiest days.
Why collect this work?
A compressed tabletop arrangement constructs summer less as scenery than as a pattern of saturated objects and sharply divided light.
- Benjamin states that place, memory, and Mediterranean colour shape his figurative practice. Here, seasonal association is concentrated in fruit, glassware, sunglasses, and pool-like blues rather than a depicted landscape.
- The bottle anchors the left side while the bowl, watermelon, lemons, and glasses overlap across a shallow field. Repeated reds and yellows connect the scattered forms; angular blue shadows give the arrangement its directional force.
- Catalogued as oil on panel canvas, the medium permits opaque colour blocks and transparent-looking passages. Bottle and bowl remain legible through layered blue, green, white, and pink shapes rather than detailed illusionism.
- As a contemporary still life, the painting shifts attention from permanent possessions to a brief interval of use: fruit has been cut, vessels set down, and sunglasses removed. Leisure is registered through its traces.
About the Artist
Pierre Benjamin
Pierre Benjamin is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: Painting. Based in Cardiff, GB.
Nationality: French
My work explores the relationship between place, memory, and cultural identity, shaped by my background in the colorful south of France and my...
