my Rembrandt

The name Rembrandt means so many things to me. So many firsts. The first time I cried in front of a painting was as a child, standing before The Return of the Prodigal Son at the Hermitage Museum. Rembrandt was the first artist who made me want to build up layers of impasto, searching for that sense of light emerging from paint. He was the first who showed me how profoundly empathy could inhabit a work of art: in street beggars, aging and fading beauty, children learning to take their first steps — in those so often seen as “the other.” My first art history essay was about the hidden self-portrait in his famous Danaë. And when I paint today, I use the oil colors that bear his name — a brand for which I am now a world ambassador. My Rembrandt is a series born from the desire to come as close as I can to a source of endless inspiration. I borrowed from Rembrandt’s drawings and prints and imagined them coming to life in color — to envision them through my own eyes and in my own language; to caress his lines with my brush. I see his eyes smiling at me. Saskia quietly asleep. His mother’s wise gaze with her mercurial smile. His many aging subjects with their heavy beards—perhaps neighbors from the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, where he spent the final decades of his life. Biblical characters discovered not in a book, but directly on the street: living, breathing people transformed into prophets, saints, patriarchs, and witnesses. This is my Rembrandt: intimate, human, vulnerable, and endlessly alive who I invite the viewer to meet and engage with.