Dear visitor!

I know that this is a website about drawings and pictures. I also know that those who come this way are not necessarily interested in me or my stories. You are more probably interested in the art and not the person behind the artwork.

For those of you who are just here for the aesthetics, I wish you a good browsing and a colourful visual experience! If you enjoy yourself, stay, browse and shop. You are welcome.

If you are not feeling comfortable staying, no worries, go in peace, I will not be upset.

And for anyone who stays longer, I’ll be happy to tell you all the details.

Since this is my website, I will take the liberty of telling you a little about myself. So sit down at my table, let’s open a bottle of fine white wine, listen like a great friend, and then let’s talk. I trust that by the end of the story we will have grown closer, and you may even feel like saying something to me, safe in the knowledge that I will respond. I also hope that my paintings will acquire a face, that my drawings will gain meaning and depth, and that the time spent with me will not only be a time to pass, but also to fill.

It can happen in your life, if you are lucky enough, that you turn fifty.

My 82-year-old Mother told me the other day that looking at her childhood photographs she realised that she was never actually 18. No doubt our twenties seem a long way off even at around 50, but I haven’t got to where my mother is yet. I still remember my young adult self, the struggling years of growing up. The compulsions to conform that made my twenties gut-wrenching. The successes I achieved at work in my thirties. To the wonderful gift of motherhood. The loves of the decades gone by. The failures in my personal life. My career peak in my forties. And then the frequently longed-for, yet painful, career break.

The many, many faces along the road.

My amazingly supportive family. Friends who have been there for me through it all. The departure of my grown-up child to seek his own path, and the resulting empty nest syndrome that I thought would never happen to me.

I remember travels, poems, songs, experiences. Days of happiness and sorrow.

Lots and lots of laughter. Difficulties, obstacles.

More vividly, the moments of grace in which I knew, I felt, that Providence has always been with me.

These memories made me turn fifty. And I became who I am.

These decades have become the collection that is all reflected in these drawings. These drawings are me as I am. Sometimes seemingly chirpy, at other times surprisingly harmonious, chatty and direct. Other times they are endlessly simple or elaborate, sometimes ostentatious. At other times they are frighteningly dark, deep, reserved and meticulous.

I owe visitors here a few simple confessions.

Basically, for as long as I can remember, I have been a very impatient person. I always get things done promptly, efficiently, as best I can, but as quickly as possible. And what I don’t have an immediate solution to, I keep examining until I either solve it or let it go peacefully. I have worked hard over the past decades to calm the constant pressure of what was happening, the almost chronic and immediate search for solutions. An important milestone in my journey of self-knowledge is the realisation that I can work for months on small details without the slightest impatience.

The pursuit of harmony has also followed me throughout my life, and as in all lifetimes, mine too has alternated periods of harmony and disharmony. I have always tried to bring things back to harmony, mostly through self-discovery, psychological studies or even active action.

I could never draw. At least not in the plain sense of the word. With a career history of a very different nature behind me, I don’t know how or why, but I suddenly started drawing and found that I enjoyed it. And while the process itself turned into a really harmonious flow experience, looking at the outcome of what I was doing, I found that while I have a very bad relationship with the co-existence of harmony and disharmony in life, these two seemingly conflicting things can coexist quite peacefully in these paintings.

Perhaps that is why I dare to show them. Because they are acceptably diverse and indecipherable.

I have to express my gratefulness to my husband.

Thanks to whom I can experiment in peace.

Who has given me the precious gift of being able to be my own person, without any existential insecurities.

Who, when looking at the collection of daily drawings I have put together, has said, “I seriously wonder sometimes if you are even sane”.

And with whom we could have a good laugh about that.