#13 – Sandra et Charlotte
May – June 2015
Acrylic on canvas (1m x 1m)

This is my first collaborative painting ever – painted with my dear friend Sandra and my 5-year old daughter Charlotte.

Sandra and I started this painting one May afternoon as she was visiting me with her children. We “danced” the various shades of blue and turquoise with large foam brushes and I sprayed water as well to make drippings. Our brushes moved together, across each other, over each other, inspiring each other and creating interesting patterns, all rounded and aquatic-like, while our children were playing together.

Sandra and I enjoyed that session and she agreed to have me complete the painting as I fancied. I let it rest for a couple of weeks, enjoying the sight of these intertwined circles and I realised that I had forgotten who of us made which shape as the shapes had merged into one harmonious layer.

I picked up the canvas a couple of weeks later, feeling the need to add some yellow to float across the blue. The shapes which came out were inspired by a walk in the nearby park with my 5-year old daughter, Charlotte. We had picked some daisies and dandelions on our walk and had thrown them in the dark water of the Alster, the adjacent river, a few steps off the path. We then had watched how the daisies and dandelions kept floating on the quiet water, bright touches of light against the deep brownish-green.

When I picked up the yellow colour, Charlotte asked me if she could paint with me. I agreed and showed her how to add patterns of colour with her fingertips to turn the paint into various forms of flowers, so her little fingers tip-tapped some of the impressions on the canvas, together with mine.

I feel grace in this painting when I look at it, as it reminds me of these precious moments, intimate, deep and light at the same time. And I feel blessed that I was able to share these with both of them, trusting the creative process and respecting each other during it.

Sandra et Charlotte. Thank you for being in my life.

*** This painting is one of the first ones that I sold in 2016, alongside two other flower-inspired paintings Everybody’s Darling and Requiem pour une fleur, to a private collector in the United Kingdom ***