I made this ‘painting of her life’ in secret.

I have surprised her before, in the middle of winter, in 2012, Donegal, Ireland. 

I had just thrown another block of turf on the fire. 
We were sitting at the kitchen table, when I unexpectedly conjured a bracelet from my pocket, one she had been admiring the beauty of in a jeweller’s showcase a few weeks earlier.

​She was speechless. 

But this time I wanted to do something different. 
A painting which envisioned her history and her dreams. 
With her sweetest memories. 
And her dear friends and family. 

The poems I wrote her.

Sweet and funny drawings and stories she that she wrote as a child.

A print of her hand as a little girl. 
​The bracelets, necklets and gems, tokens of my love.

And of course an image of Corbet Castle in the country
she longed to live in for so long.

Secretly I searched for pictures, drawings, poems and even some old notebooks from school. 
I asked her parents to send me information and images of her childhood and tried to bring
more than a hundred elements together in one ‘painting’
I ‘hid’ many elements in the painting, in a way that she kept discovering little secrets for weeks. 

Here's a video about the making of. 

After I had been working secretly for many evenings
I finished it and had it printed on canvas.

And gave as a present. 

MIES

More about : your life on canvas