Aux Portes du Passé

“Aux Portes du Passé” Series Artist Statement

Doors. Gates. Portals. Entryways.
Each different.

In France, I love the doors. Les portes. Not the anodyne, hollow-panel, less-is-more ones we know.

The ones I adore are each different, some many centuries old, all sizes, all unique, and they speak the language you expect: stay out.

But they say it with the profound charm of geraniums cascading from above, of wisteria twining nearby, and even in the bristling severity of medieval ironwork.  
They are the gorgeous Art Deco grillage of a hotel in Paris, the ancient wood, polished by the years, of my cousin’s house in Agen, and the whimsical carved creatures of doors in Toulouse.

They are “Aux portes du passé”, doors of the past, and, think of it, also doors into the past, a past that, in this ancient country, flows into all the senses, reminding us that each of us, immensely complex, is a bundle of genes reaching back in time.

-Eve Alfillé