Wedding Portrait

A wedding marks one of life's true thresholds — the passage from maiden or bachelor into wife or husband, two lives deciding to become, as Matthew puts it, one flesh. Artists have always been drawn to it.

But the famous wedding portraits almost all show kings and princes; the ceremony was as much political as private, and court painters were there to record the power. I wanted to do the opposite. The couple in this print, set in a decorative frame, are people who hold a special place in my heart. Their presence is the whole reason the work exists.

Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait has long inspired me — he chose oak and oil to keep one couple young and beautiful forever. I chose paper and my own graphic techniques, but the impulse is the same: this moment is worth preserving.

A signed, original graphic work.

Jolanta