Ice-Creaming

The siblings are reminiscent of children’s portraits of noble families from the 17th and 18th centuries. Then, as now, children were forced into pretty little dresses and depicted as perfectly as possible. The work plays with these stereotypes and demonstrates how a much more lively image can result from a little less perfection. The younger sister didn’t want to wear a dress and is therefore shown in a casual T-shirt. While eating ice cream, they played happily, and the mother was prevented from wiping the ice cream off her daughter’s face. The moment painted is the very moment the girls didn’t want to sit still any longer and were asked by their mother to be „good“ for a moment. This moment of silent recapitulation, accompanied by almost tragically melancholic looks, captivates the viewer and stimulates discussion about staged vs. natural depictions.

*The Imperfections series shows the aesthetics of the supposedly unsightly: the baroque splendor of the protagonists staged is in deliberate contradiction to the humorous use of elements or situations from our contemporary everyday life – united in a harmonious total work of art.