Becoming Her

This is my youngest daughter, painted life-size, at eleven years old; right on the edge of everything.

She's confident. She knows who she is in that particular, unselfconscious way children do before the world starts asking them to explain themselves. And yet she is also just so vulnerable, stepping into her almost-teen years with these creature charms swinging from her bag, one foot already somewhere I can't quite follow.

I painted her figure with everything I had — every hour of looking, every year of practice — and let the background stay loose and unresolved, almost chaotic, because that felt like the truth of this moment. She is vivid and clear and real in the middle of something that isn't settled yet. That's what it is to be eleven. That's what it is to watch her.

This painting gives me a special kind of heartache, the way only love can.

Oil on canvas, 1820×1220mm. Original painted by Meredith Marsone, New Zealand artist and figurative painter with 25 years experience.

Also available as a digital downloadable print here. The painting was made to be lived with — to catch you across a room and make you feel something.