Sometimes Ago - C Major — Acrylic on Linen Canvas by Arnaud Quercy

About This Artwork

Sometimes Ago — C Major translates a musical key into painted color through Arnaud Quercy's chromesthetic system. In this system, each musical tone corresponds to a fixed color: C maps to red, E to yellow, and G to red-orange. The tonic triad of C Major is therefore entirely warm, and the painting renders those three tones together on a single surface. The work belongs to the C Major series within the broader Synesthetic Explorations collection, which maps musical keys to color through personal chromesthetic perception.

Red-orange tones fill the largest share of the surface, running from deep firebrick and crimson through bright orange-red to softer salmon and rosy brown. Together these warm hues cover most of the composition, organized into broad flat planes and interlocking geometric blocks. The left and center areas concentrate the warmest, most saturated passages — vivid orange-red and pure red sit side by side in large adjacent fields. Moving right, a column of cool slate blue and dark gray enters the composition, providing a clear contrast to the warm mass. Black appears in narrow vertical strips near the center-right edge, sharpening the boundary between warm and cool zones. Small accents of pale off-white and ochre appear near the upper center, adding brief light notes to an otherwise deeply saturated field. The paint is applied in acrylic on linen canvas, with flat, even coverage that keeps the color relationships direct and unambiguous.

The painting measures 146 × 114 × 4 cm and weighs 2 kg. It is classified as large in scale. The work was completed in 2026 in France and carries certificate number 20260620-0099. It is part of the C Major series within the Synesthetic Explorations collection.