DE PAIN ET D'OR

In De Pain et d’Or, Arsène Welkin explores the sacred dimension of the everyday. His paintings do not depict scenes, they reveal a way of being in the world: slow, attentive, nourished by presence and by light.

Here, bread is not mere sustenance. It is an ancestral gesture, a gift of warmth, an invisible act of sharing. It reminds us that every life, every journey, every human bond begins with what is given. Bread is the first light of the day, the deep heart of the home, the simple measure of dignity.

Facing it, gold does not signify wealth but inner light. The light of the sun at its zenith, the lingering glow at day’s end upon a face, the light that crosses a thought or reflects upon zellige tiles. In Welkin’s work, gold is not material, it is revelation. It appears when the gaze becomes humble, when simple things allow themselves to be seen, when the world renounces noise to offer itself in its purest intensity.

Arsène Welkin’s figures do not pose; they inhabit. They do not seek to seduce or to explain: they wait, they listen, they rest. Their silence is not absence, it is focus, peace, an inward listening. They embody a sense of time that no longer belongs to speed but to the breathing of time itself. This stillness is never static: it is alive, almost musical, like the moment before an instrument sounds, before a cup of tea is poured, before a dance begins.

In these paintings, Morocco is not a backdrop, it is atmosphere, light, sacred geometry, human warmth. It does not speak of exoticism but of intimacy. The zelliges become silent scores, architecture for the gaze, mineral memory. The flowers, often present, do not adorn, they keep watch. They bear witness to what opens, what breathes, what passes. They carry the idea of an offered beauty, never forced.

De Pain et d’Or is thus a meditation on what painting can still do today: not to narrate, but to reveal. Not to cry out, but to open a space where seeing becomes feeling.

In this world, the most humble life turns to gold, and the subtlest gold remains humble. The canvas becomes a table, color becomes bread, and the gaze becomes an offering. These works invite reconciliation, between the simple gesture and the sacred, the everyday and grace, matter and what transcends it.

In these suspended spaces, the viewer is not a witness, they are invited. Invited to slow down. Invited to remember that beauty hides in what we share, in what we contemplate, in what we receive in silence.

Here, painting nourishes.

Here, light blesses.

And all that seems simple suddenly becomes essential.