Underneath Painting

The figure is referenced from a photograph of a young woman in front of a destroyed maternity ward during the Ukraine war. Instead of the maternity war, I wanted to include an open space and a burning city in the background, both to give distance from the actual destruction and include the sky, to give a hint of the natural world. I find that the main character of the painting is the colorful blanket that, to me, carries a well of meaning: The colorful blanket that protectively covers the young mother's figure is a literal and metaphorical boundary that highlights the juxtaposition of innocence and cruel violence. The young mother who is holding on to her old 'child skin' before shedding it, plunging into motherhood, and becoming a protective lion herself, who will adjust to the harshness to protect her cub. And not least, for me, the blanket is a metaphor for art. How it can shelter my soul from the reality around us.