Lutry plage
Monday
August 3, 2026
14:00
My dear Léman,I love you even more now, my dear Léman.
You are my perfect summer of 2026.
Despite all the difficulties with housing… or rather, the lack of it… I think I would be willing to live almost on the street, as long as I could be with you every day. To be in you. To become part of you. To paint you. To touch you. To feel your water slowly soaking into me until I dissolve in it.
Your water transforms and carries away all my worries, hardships, and dark thoughts.
The sound of your waves somehow plays the strings of my soul. Like a Chopin waltz… I don’t know what kind of music it is, but it is a deep hum vibrating at some mysterious frequency, like the music of awakening.
In 2026, I found my perfect summer.
Almost every day I swim in you, Léman.
I am writing these lines sitting on Lutry Beach, right at the water’s edge. I am sitting on warm stones, listening to the sound of your waves.
I want to swim in you during storms, when your waves are strong, to feel your rhythm, the movement of your water.
To see your transparency every morning.
Your purity.
Your innocence.
I am so happy to see you, to be with you, to be in you.
Sometimes I simply close my eyes.
I don’t feel like writing anything.
I only want to stay silent, sending you my thoughts without words, knowing that somehow you can read them.
This week I didn’t paint in oils.
I spent three days painting in watercolor, with mixed results.
For the last two days, I haven’t painted at all.
It feels as if I am collecting a strange sense of guilt in front of all this beauty.
As if I want beauty to stop waiting for me…
…and begin chasing me instead.
As if it were whispering,
“Look… look… how can you leave me unpainted?”
Then I begin to feel guilty.
“I have to paint. I have to paint.”
I need to build up that feeling that I am running out of time.
That I must do something now.
So that I no longer feel that I am tormenting this beauty.
That I am tormenting nature around me.
That I am tormenting everything I see.
Instead…
I want beauty to begin tormenting me.
And only then do I truly want to paint.
Because nothing else seems possible.
Sometimes I want to paint from a place where I have escaped from everyone and everything.
To disappear completely and remain alone with my subject.
I long for absolute solitude.
It is very rare that I find a place where I can work like that.
Very rare.
You know, Léman, it was on your shore that you brought me together with a journalist from Le Courrier.
This month, the first newspaper article about me as an artist was published.
A full-page article.
Three large photographs: one beside my easel, one at my market stand, and one of my paintings.
All of this was happening alongside days of sadness and depression as autumn slowly approached.
Alongside the despair of having nowhere to live and the fear that I may soon have to leave Switzerland.
At the same time, I was booking the exhibition space at Villa Mégroz in Lutry for the end of October.
When my face looks this sad, I become afraid to go outside.
I worry that people will think I am unfriendly or that I don’t like them.
The truth is much simpler.
I am just sad.
And I cannot talk to anyone.
Soon this endless celebration called summer will disappear without a trace.
The cold will return.
So will the melancholy.
And yet…
I bought two hand-painted porcelain plates from Lisa, a ceramic artist from Russia.
I would like to create my own porcelain serving plates for apéro, painted with views of Lutry, for my October exhibition.
It will be my first paintings on porcelain.
I’ll stop here.
God, please help me get through August.
Somehow I have to learn not to think so much.
Your friend,
Olga Ceruleanistique