"Strawberry blue"

A few weeks ago I went to buy art supplies. 

I like to roam around in art stores and eventually I stumbled across oil pastels, immediately knowing they’re coming home with me. 

My siblings and I had a set of them, and they played a significant role in our childhood. The slightly disgusting smell of the pastels caught me off guard taking me back in time. So i prepared a canvas and chose a background colour.

After picking the contrasting colours, I painted the pastel lines without a single thought behind them. The freedom of childhood. 

Not being sure where to go from there, I put the painting aside for quite a while. Eventually it hit me, and I finished it the same night. The next morning I first saw the painting and thought: „this looks like a strawberry“; which is a bit odd, because it doesn’t. But it makes perfect sense. 

A different defining memory from this particular era is one where we went to the local farmers fields to pick strawberries. 

It felt like I am keeping my memories bundled in emotional categories, and if one is triggered, the whole bundle secretly buzzes through my subconsciousness; shaping and enhancing the emotions regarding the initial, more conscious memory.