I bought my first artwork when I moved into my student room. It was a copy of the photograph The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville by Robert Doisneau, taken in 1950 and widely reproduced on postcards and posters during the 1980s. To me, it was art.
Everything I longed for was captured in that single image: freedom, Paris, travel, frivolity and love. None of it became reality.
Later, I bought a painting of a Spanish dancer, her dress seeming to move organically around her body. I saw the painting as I walked out of the hospital after my sixth and final round of chemotherapy. To me, it represented strength, movement, maybe even Spain itself. It marked a point I had reached, even though I still didn’t feel strong at all.
And somehow, it all did become reality.
I learned how to move through life with flow, and many years later I moved to Spain.
Art, or an object, can give you a feeling and become attached to a moment in your life in a way almost nothing else can. You don’t have that with a sofa. Or a flowerpot.
You don’t need art.
But it gives you so much more than necessity ever could.
Often, we don’t buy art because of who we are, but because of who we hope to become.
That photograph of Paris was never really about a kiss to me. It was an opening towards a life that felt bigger than the one I knew at the time. Travel. Lightness. Romance. Becoming a woman who could simply be in Paris.
Only later do you realise that art can sometimes be a glimpse of a life that has yet to exist.
A House Without Art Feels Different
You can create a perfectly designed home without a single artwork. Beautiful materials. A good sofa. Calm colours.
But art brings personality into a space. Layers. Sometimes even tension. It tells a story about what someone longs for, what they have lived through, what moves them deeply. That is what makes a house not just beautiful, but personal.
This is often forgotten, or barely used by interior designers. The owner should choose the artwork — not the designer.
Art is not decoration. It is personality.
Some objects mark who we once were. Others quietly point towards who we may become. A memory of a holiday. A turning point in life.
My objects exist somewhere between functional object and meaningful sculpture.
And as a maker, I place something of myself into every piece. Each object contains a combination of flow, strength, and perhaps even courage. The robust and geometric forms remind me of that, and in a way, I hope to pass that feeling on to others.
Flow is something that makes me deeply happy. When life flows — when movement feels almost effortless, when you seem connected to everything around you.
Maybe that is what all of us are searching for.
