“I believe in the power of connection. I think a person can change another person. You get very motivated to get better when you feel warmth toward someone”, Rebeca said. “Do you have an example that you would like to share?”, I asked.

“There was a person in my life, a long time ago. There was one thing I really appreciated about him and I still sometimes try to channel this into myself. The thing was: He never judged, accused or pointed a finger. He just did his own thing in the best way he thought possible. He was a vegetarian, for example. And he never asked me why I wasn’t or tried to lecture me on it. He just was. And when I was at his, he would cook vegetarian, and if we went out, he ordered vegetarian for himself, and it was never a topic.

But I remember I started getting curious and began looking into it and eventually, I became vegetarian myself!”, she laughed. “And he would do that with other things as well. He had a lot of good traits, and he inspired me in many ways. It always felt like it came from me, I just observed him be – and that motivated me so much. If I had questions, I could go to him anytime, but he never tried to force anything.”

When I made Rebeca’s smallest, I first followed my intuitive idea of a womb that I saw in front of my inner eyer, creating a soft, peachy surface. The womb stood for just being and influencing the other person in a positive manner, similar to some kind of osmosis I imagine to happen between mother and foetus. In that soft surface, I positioned two colour pools, a blue one and a red one. The blue area was initially smaller than the red area. That was implying hierarchy – but that is not the truth. The materials started revealing the actuality of Rebeca’s belief:

The colours flew into one another, and demanded I add more blue for better flow. Also, it was not the case that just one colour flew into the other which was what I initially had imagined. Of course, the connection is reciprocal!

And what’s interesting is that the colours actually did not mix to become purple, but stayed separate flowing into one another. Then I realised it looked like a tree, so I added leaves, blue leaves that fall to the red ground, nourish it, and flow back into the tree to become red fruit. But then my mind started taking over and wanted to increasingly direct my actions on the canvas.

As a result, I found the picture to look stiffer, as if this was to show how imposing an idea on someone else does not lead to a lively outcome. Maybe you cannot perceive it anymore, but the sweet spot of this smallest had been reached before my mind took over.