In progress. 2 more paintings coming soon
Treats
Inspired by sweet treats - how airy and glossy they are. I go back to childhood memories and explore playfulness of colors and textures.
Cotton Candy · Mints · Marshmallow · Bubble gum · Blueberry muffin
About this collection
Sweetness
This collection began with candy - the airiness of cotton candy, the gloss on a mint's shell, the way sweet things catch light without ever looking heavy. I wanted that same lightness in paint: colour and texture built up softly, and are playful rather than dense.
Back to childhood
Sweets and cross-stitching sit in the same memory for me - long summer afternoons where both were always close by. 'Treats' carries that memory forward, mixing the technique I learned as a child with the sweetness that came alongside it.
Inspired by cross-stitching
My grandma
Cross-stitching goes back to my childhood. Every summer break, I'd travel to the coast with my grandma, and while other kids were playing volleyball or swimming in the sea, I'd sit on the beach cross-stitching new patterns.
The X shape
That's where the love for the X shape started, and it's stayed with me ever since - it's still the shape almost everything I paint comes back to. It's a perfectly balances and such a universal shape for creativity.
Handmade
Cross-stitch has a particular bulkiness to it - the thread sits on top of the fabric rather than flat against it, building up a texture you can feel as much as see. It never lies quite the same way twice, catching and releasing light differently with every stitch.
Repetition
There's something meditative about that repetition too - the same small motion, over and over, until a pattern slowly emerges. I've carried all of that into painting: building up texture by hand, shape by shape, so the surface catches light the way stitched thread always did.
Why always 8 paintings
My lucky number
Since I was a kid I had this unusual love to the number 8 - I'd add it to nicknames, passwords, anything that let me sneak it in. I've also been fascinated by octopuses my whole life, and they also happen to have eight tentacles - it all just adds up.
A finished story
In every collection I make, I place exactly eight paintings. It feels like a finished story, like a whole experience that I provide with a collection. Eight is enough space to tell that story fully, without ever feeling rushed or padded out.
Making of this collection
