Original artwork description:

In The Class That Remained, you look into the eyes of a school that no longer exists.
The children are arranged like in an old class photograph: neatly positioned, quiet, expectant. And yet something feels off. Their gazes are too serious, too knowing, as if they already sense that this place will disappear.

This painting is inspired by the closed village school of my childhood: a building once filled with voices, notebooks, and promise, slowly emptied by centralisation and neglect. The figures seem suspended between presence and absence: they are here, but they no longer belong here.

The rough brushstrokes and layered use of colour enhance the sense of memory and loss. Some faces are sharply defined, while others fade, just as memories do. The blue background suggests distance and time, while the warm reds and skin tones hold on to the human presence.

This work reflects on collective memory, on what disappears from villages when institutions vanish, and on the children we once were sitting in a classroom that shaped us, but was itself denied a future.

Materials used:

Acrylics, oil

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