The painting

The painting, it doesn’t just remind me of you, or us. It reminds me of me. It reminds me of the road I’m taking and the spirit I need to keep going with.

Maybe you never thought about what it means when you chose to give me this particular work of art. Maybe you thought I’d appreciate the colours, the richness of the colours. I was certain that you said something like, “we went to an exhibition together and I found out that she liked art” as you were about to give me this print on my birthday party, while everyone was watching curiously.

And so it was, a beautiful, magnificently coloured print. You explained to me, “this is the work of a Dutch artist, Gertie Janssen, you can look it up”. You’re a real friend, you’d known that I would look it up. “It’s written here, the 55th of only 200 prints they produced”.

I never owned any prints before. Posters are more suitable for my budget. Prints are something else, it’s luxury. And a print from you, a gesture so personalized and full of understanding, a sort of loving kindness, is beyond touching, it’s inspiring. We’ve gone far beyond the day when we first met, I only was a student sitting impatiently for my first lecture in a foreign country, you were a curious teacher. Somehow it has gone much beyond that line to what now is a maternalistic friendship on your part, and puzzled amazement on my part of how we got this close.

Today the print is neatly framed, hanged on my wall. A sober creature, head held up high and looking straight ahead, elegant and determined. Her feet on the move, striking  forward they seem. Red for bravery, yellow for liveliness, blue for the calm force that moves all things. Sunrise II by Gertie Janssen. The sum of my experience this year, the marking of a new beginning ahead.

Everything moves you, and that’s when you know that it’s a beginning, that you are in motion. Embrace the sunrise.

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