Gold LeafKatrina

Shot from below, which makes her taller than you whether you like it or not.

The white top is the only cold thing in the picture. Everything around it runs warm. What is nearly visible underneath it stays nearly visible, and that is the whole photograph.

The gold is real gold leaf, not paint. There is no gold in oil paint, and whatever you build with it is a pile of decisions pretending to be something it cannot be. I do not ask it to pretend any more.

The weeks went into her face and got nowhere. She is looking away and there are sunglasses in between, and together they put her out of reach, close to arrogant. I kept trying to take that out of her and I never managed it. So it stopped with the refusal still in it.

What do you do with it?

Buying it is the easy part

The photograph this came from was made to be scrolled past. It got three seconds, if that. This canvas took weeks, and it will hang on a wall for years and be seen every day.

Ordering it takes a minute. Deciding where it goes is the part that takes nerve, because everyone who walks into that room will see it and think something. That part is yours.

About this work

Original oil and gold leaf on canvas. One of a kind.

• Medium — acrylic underpainting, finished in oil on stretched canvas, with gold leaf
• Size — 120 × 100 cm (height × width)
• Edition — one of one, signed. Not a print and not an edition.
• Series — Painted Idols, oil portraits of women who are looked at for three seconds at a time
• Studio — Boekel, the Netherlands
• Shipping — insured from the Netherlands, certificate of authenticity included