Love is an eternal vow

Group exhibition in the monastery and garden of the Sisters of Charity, tilburg

With the collective Voor even verheven

An active monastery in Tilburg, with an average age of the residents of 91 years. During the exhibition, I painted live, working from photographs from the City Archive of Tilburg that document life in the monastery.

The work The Promise of a Lifelong Connection was created based on a celebration I attended in the sisters’ chapel. During the service, I made sketches and took photographs. Back in my studio, I reviewed the images and selected the moment in which the sisters shake each other’s hands. I wanted to capture their posture and the love they show toward one another. I connected this moment to how it feels to me to work with a horse: a relationship based on body language, in which you are connected by invisible lines.

The lifelong commitment to faith, place, and to one another—rooted in a personal, loving conviction—is something I also recognize in the relationship between human and horse. It is a relationship that requires daily care and carries the promise that you will be there for the animal for life. In addition, both embody feminine qualities. Horses always seek a return to harmony; harmony is safety.

Both images come together in a form that evokes an organic house, blessed by two angels, inspired by the angels sculpted in the chapel. At the bottom, two sisters in full habit are depicted. As a reference, I used an image from the Tilburg City Archive. Beneath the sisters’ hands, which find one another, the past is rendered precious, while in the imagination of the sisters of today, the past of the sisters is reflected.

The monastry has bought my work The promise of a lifelong connection, it is now permanently hanging in the monastry.