My daughter told me my painting looks "less sad" lately and she's right

My sixteen-year-old came into the studio yesterday without knocking, which she never does, and stood behind me for maybe a full minute while I was working. Then she said, "Maman, your paintings look less sad now."

I wanted to be defensive at first. But she's right. I didn't even see it until she said it.

For years my palette was all terre verte and raw umber and bone black, everything in that low grey northern light. I think I was painting the inside of my own head without realising it. The fallow years I had, the disappointment, it was all there in the colour, every time.

Now there's more warmth. Not bright, not cheerful, just... alive. A little Naples yellow in the shadows. A red glaze where I would have left it dead.

Kids see things. She doesn't know about the decade I lost, she only knows what she sees on the easel. And she saw it.

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Dimitra Vasilakis·2w

This hit me. A sixteen-year-old noticing something like that, she's really seeing you, not just the paintings.

There's something about colour that just comes out of you whether you mean it or not. I work in mosaic, so I'm choosing stone and glass rather than mixing, but I notice the same thing looking back at old work. A whole period where everything I picked was dark, even the grout. You don't realise you're doing it until someone from outside names it.

Good for you. And good for her for saying it.

Kasia Nowak·2w

Yes, exactly this. It's not even a choice most of the time, the palette just is what you're carrying. I look back at portraits I did two years ago and the skin tones were all grey and cool, and I thought it was just my style. Now I think I was just sad and didn't want to admit it.

It must be interesting with mosaic though, committing to a colour in stone before you see the whole thing. With pastel I can layer and change my mind a hundred times. There's something brave about choosing a piece of glass and just living with it.

Camille LaurentOP·2w

The mosaic part is what I keep thinking about. With oil I can scrape a passage off with a palette knife if I hate it, repaint the same spot six times. There's no repentance in glass. You choose, and then the choice is permanent, and you learn to live with that. There's something I could learn from that, honestly. I repaint too much.

Camille LaurentOP·2w

You saying this about mosaic, that the grout was dark too, that's the detail that gets me. It's the thing around the thing, the frame you didn't choose. People think colour is decorative, they don't understand it's confessional.

Thank you. And yes, her saying it... she's not a kid who hands out compliments. So I'm keeping it.

Dani Okafor·2w

oh this hit me hard. there's something so vulnerable about someone else noticing a shift in your work before you've even caught it yourself. and a sixteen-year-old too, you know she's not saying it to be nice, she's actually watching you.

i had this moment a couple years ago where my mom looked at a painting i'd done and just said "you seem lighter." i was so annoyed at first haha but she was right and i was just... living in it without seeing it. colour is so honest, it leaks out of you. i think that's why i love watercolour specifically, you can't really fake it, the transparency shows everything.

so happy for you honestly. not just the shift in palette but that she saw it and said it. that's a good moment.

Elin Holm·2w

Your mother saying it must have stung a bit too. But she was right, same as your daughter was right for the OP. That's the uncomfortable thing about people who really know you, they see it before you do.

I work with found paper so I'm choosing someone else's colour, not my own. Always found it easier that way, less direct. But I notice I gravitate toward different paper tones in different years and I'm not sure I'd catch it either if someone didn't point it out. The eye goes where the eye goes.

Camille LaurentOP·2w

That's interesting about the found paper, you're right that it's less direct in a way, but I wonder if it's also more honest in another sense. You can't lie to yourself about what you're picking up. The hand goes to what it needs.

And yes, the mother thing. Mothers have the longest view. Mine died before the fallow years so she never saw me paint the grey ones. Sometimes I think that's a mercy, sometimes I wish she could have told me to put the terre verte down.

Camille LaurentOP·2w

Your mother said it, that's almost harder, isn't it. They've known you your whole life, they have the full before-and-after. At least with my daughter I can tell myself she only has the last few years to compare.

But you're right about watercolour. Oil lets you lie a little, scrub things out, paint over. Watercolour just holds the truth there whether you wanted it or not. I admire that but I don't think I could live with it.