Do the women know? What I write to them, and what I do not ask

Do they know about the paintings?

Some do, and for the rest I cannot vouch. What I can tell you is what I did: I wrote to every one of them.

Every woman whose photograph has become a painting is sent a message about it. That is a thing I do, not a thing that happens by itself, and it is the reason the series can carry her name on the wall label instead of calling her nothing.

The word is some rather than all, and that is deliberate. I know what I sent. I do not know what was read. A message that goes out is not the same as a message that arrives in front of somebody, and I am not going to round the second one up to the first because it would sound better.

These are accounts with audiences in the hundreds of thousands and up. A message from a painter in Boekel arrives in a pile with a few hundred others that day, and there is no version of this where it stands out. So the honest reading of a silence is that it is probably a message nobody ever got to, and not a verdict on the painting.

What exactly do I tell them?

Four things, and none of them is a request.

• Which photograph it was.
• That it has become an oil painting, and what the painting is called.
• Where the work can be seen, so she can look at it before deciding anything.
• That she can have it taken off this site, and that she does not have to explain why.

There is nothing to tell anybody until a canvas exists. Before that there is only an intention, and an intention is not worth somebody else’s time. So the message is about a finished painting, which also means it arrives after the work is done rather than as a way of getting it started.

What is not in the message: a request to post about it, an offer, a discount code, or a question dressed up as a courtesy. If I wrote to fourteen women and every message ended in a favour, the informing would be marketing with better manners.

Is telling the same as asking?

No. This is the most honest sentence on the page, so it gets its own section.

Telling someone is not the same as asking them, and I am not offering it here as consent. If I called it consent I would be borrowing her authority to make myself comfortable, and she would have handed me nothing.

The reason I do not ask is not that the answer frightens me. It is that the painting is mine. I chose the image, I spent the weeks, and the responsibility for the result sits with me rather than with somebody who happened to publish a photograph. Asking would spread that responsibility across people who never took it on. The risk that comes with painting a real person is mine to carry, and I know what it is.

What the law says about a photograph and a likeness is a separate question with a separate answer, and it is in two rights on one image.

What if she does not reply?

Then she does not reply, and I read nothing into that in either direction.

A silence is not a yes. It is also not a no. People miss messages, ignore messages, plan to answer and forget, or read something and decide it needs no answer at all. Any of those is normal, and none of them tells me anything I could honestly put on a page.

Some did write back, and the ones who did were warm about it. That was a good day and it is still not consent. A page that leaned on the friendly replies and went quiet about the rest would be doing the exact thing this one claims not to do, so both halves are here.

So the site says I write to every one of them. It does not say they all know, and it does not say they approve, because I have no idea whether they do, and a sentence that quietly implied otherwise would be the cheapest thing on this website.

Can she have the painting taken down?

Yes, and the sentence is already at the bottom of every page in this series:

If you are the woman in the photograph, or you made the photograph, and you would rather it were not shown here: write to the studio and it comes down. No explanation needed.

No explanation needed means exactly that. There is no form, no review, and no conversation in which I try to talk somebody round. A message is enough, and the reason I do not want a reason is that asking for one turns a right into a negotiation.

What comes down is what this studio publishes: the photograph on her page, the page itself, the listing in the shop. What I cannot take back is a canvas that is already hanging in somebody’s house, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. That is the limit of the promise, and it is better said out loud than discovered later.

Does she earn anything when a painting sells?

No. There is no commission and no royalty, and I am not going to dress that up.

What she has instead is her name on the work, the source photograph credited on the page, and a standing right to have all of it removed. Those are real, and they are more than a found-image painting usually offers. They are also not payment, and calling them a form of payment would be the sort of sentence this whole page exists to avoid.

If that arrangement ever changes it will be written here, on this page, in a line as plain as this one.

And what about you, hanging it?

This is the part nobody asks the painter, because it is not the painter’s problem.

You hang a painting of a woman with a name. Sooner or later somebody on your sofa works out that she is a real person who is findable in about four seconds, and asks whether that is allowed. It is a fair question, and the worst moment to start assembling an answer is while somebody is waiting for one.

So here it is, short enough to repeat: she published the photograph herself, the painting credits it and names her, she has been written to about the work, and she can have it taken off this site at any time without giving a reason.

That is the honest version. It is not a certificate and it does not settle every question, which is precisely why it is worth having in your own words rather than in mine. Buying it is the easy part.

The wider argument about what separates a painting from the image it came from sits in where the line between erotic art and pornography actually falls, and how a photograph ends up on an easel at all is in how I find the women I paint.

Every canvas carries her first name and credits the photograph it was made from. The paintings are here.

Questions people ask

Do they know about the paintings?

Some do, and for the rest I cannot vouch. I write to every one of them: every woman whose photograph has become a painting is sent a message about it. Some wrote back, warmly. Others never replied, and on accounts that size a message from a painter is easy to miss. I know what I sent, and I do not know what was read.

Is telling the same as asking?

No. Telling someone is not the same as asking them, and it is not offered here as consent. The painting is mine, the weeks in it are mine, and the responsibility for it stays with me rather than with the woman who published the photograph.

Can she have the painting taken down?

Yes. Write to the studio and it comes down, with no explanation needed. That covers the photograph, the page and the listing. A canvas that has already been sold is in a private house and beyond the reach of this studio, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise.

Does she earn anything when a painting sells?

No. There is no commission and no royalty. What she has is her name on the work, the source photograph credited, and a standing right to have all of it removed. Those are real, and they are not payment.