Dutch Deelee

Deelee (Black Straps) started with the pose, and then with the way the whole thing sat in the frame. That was enough to keep me there. What she is wearing and how she actually is are two different things, and I did not resolve that. I am not sure it can be resolved. There is a light in that canvas that was never in the photograph; it is there because the contrast needed somewhere to go.

Why she became a muse

I met Deelee at the Kamasutrabeurs, a fair in the Netherlands. She is hard to miss: tall, with a very strong personality, and properly funny on top of that.

Together we went through her photographs and chose the ones I wanted to paint. What held me was the elegance, right next to all that personality. The two pull against each other, and it leaves you unsure how to read her. You think you know her, and then you are not so sure.

With her, as with every woman in this series, it comes down to small details: how the figure is placed, and how precisely. That has to be exactly right.

I really liked that she responded so warmly, and she shared both paintings with her followers on Instagram.

Painting Dutch Deelee in the studio

Deelee (Golden Girl) began with her look. Direct, sure of itself, not asking anything of me. That is not how every image in this series arrives, and it changes what the painting has to do.

The difficulty in that one was not her. There is no gold in oil paint, so the gold on her shirt and hat is gold leaf: a second material on the canvas, and it took considerably longer than she did.

Both were painted days at a time over several weeks, with long gaps of nothing in between. No sketch, no plan. I do not know what a canvas will be when I start, which is also why nothing can go wrong here: there is no target to miss. Both stopped when I was finished with them. Whether they are finished is a different question and I cannot answer it.

Dutch Deelee paintings: what exists

Both are 80 x 60 cm, signed, one of one: Black Straps in oil on stretched canvas, Golden Girl in oil and gold leaf on canvas. A hand-signed print exists of each, in a small edition that is never reprinted. The paintings stay one of a kind. The canvases were painted by hand from those photographs; what they became is the painter's doing, not hers.

What is still available, and at what price, is on the cards below.