What remains

100 x 100 cm || Acrylic on canvas

I’ve never thought about my own childhood as much as I do now, watching my children wander through the very places my memories still call home.

It is as though they are gently stepping into the moments I once lived, days when I felt completely safe, when the world seemed impossibly small and endlessly fascinating all at once. The dirt road was the destination, it might as well have been the surface of the moon. I could spend hours following, and distracting, an ant. There was no urgency, only wonder.

I think those of us fortunate enough to have been given a safe childhood will always carry a quiet longing for those years. Not because life was perfect, but because it was simple. Because we belonged completely to the present.

This painting was created for a special mother, Marise. It is inspired by a photograph of her son sitting on a farm road, happily lost in the sand on an ordinary day.

But perhaps there are no ordinary days in childhood.

These are the moments that slip by unnoticed while we are living them, only to become the memories we treasure most. Long after the footprints have disappeared and the seasons have changed, they remain. Small sacred reminders of a time when the world was held together by curiosity, imagination, and the feeling that home was never that far away.