I was organizing my photo folders and found these images I made about five years ago, of tiles painted with personalized images of my pets. They were painted by my good friend, the artist Jessie Leigh, who is one of the most talented people I've ever met and really lives art in her daily life, in so many ways.
Jessie is and always has been an inspiration to me, as she has never been concerned with the label of artist, but only with having fun discovering and testing many techniques.
She is my biggest inspiration for having ventured into textile arts as well as drawing and painting.
At the time these portraits were painted on the tiles, I hadn't even dreamed of picking up a brush and doing any kind of drawing. That was very unlikely, as I had no confidence in myself to try. The fear of others' judgment also stopped me from doing anything. But Jessie was also always one of my biggest encouragers. We haven't seen each other in recent years, as she lives in a different country, but I always find myself looking at her art - this one of the tiles I commissioned and other works of hers that I have at home - and thinking how much she has influenced me to have more fun in the process, regardless of the result.
Finding these pictures today was a pleasant surprise, as they reminded me very fondly of this part of my life, of this friend and of my pets who are no longer with me. I look at these pictures and I can see that she has captured the soul of all of them in their eyes.
