WAITING FOR A FRIEND by db Waterman

A girl plays outside with her ball on an early sunny Sunday morning. On the light blue tiles , wearing her white summer dress. The streets are still quiet and empty. She is waiting for a friend to play with.

In my own early childhood, I always loved going outside to play on a Sunday morning because there were almost no people on the streets. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful.

Children inspire me. Their ability to transcend any rotten situation is amazing. Playing tag in the ruins of a bombed-out Syrian city. Playing soccer in the most miserable neighborhoods. They are always looking for the light. They save the future that our generations really messed up and don't even blame us for it. If only we could keep the child in ourselves a little more, we wouldn't be in such a mess. Art can help us find our childlike innocence again

The original painting is a Mixed Media / Collage artwork on paper. Made with layers of paper revealing text and letters. Over that, acrylic paint was applied in a transparent layer. Finally, I painted the girl with the ball on top of that.

This artwork is offered by db Waterman

I remembered that as a young girl I so much liked to cut images from magazines to paste them into school agendas, scrapbooks and even on my bedroom door. Add to this the fascination I always had for walls filled with old posters, flaking paint, scrappy billboards and weathered paint, it opened an unexpected door for completely new opportunities. Completely unintended I found a new way of working, I felt pleasurably and comfortably at home in. What started out as copying old walls with worn out posters has grown into many series of new visual storytelling. Not simply just eclecticism, but bringing together many seemingly incoherent story lines into one completely new story, my own personal story. Initially it lacked the one thing that is important to me, the transparency that normally only is possible with the use of watercolor. The unforgiving layering of transparent watercolors is a challenge I would not want to miss and after a lot of trial and error I finally succeeded in getting the collages as transparent as a watercolor. Every layer of paper, oil, acrylic, pencil, crayon, ballpoint, watercolor, ink, charcoal and whatever else I use, remains visible in the artwork. You can imagine it made me feel the queen of the ball !

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• All artworks by db Waterman
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