My First Exhibition

I stood next to my paintings and did not recognise them.

This is the strangest thing about an exhibition — seeing your works on the wall of a public place. They are no longer yours. They belong to whoever looks at them.

A woman stood in front of 'Quiet After the Rain' for ten minutes without moving. Finally she asked me: 'Do you know that moment after the rain?' I told her yes. She told me she had lost her mother a year ago, and in this painting she saw the moment when everything goes quiet after the hardest thing.

I didn't paint that. But the painting knew.

If you ask me what is the most moving thing about being an artist — it's not the painting. It's the moment the painting meets someone else.