Serendipity

This painting was made by a very talented Italian artist Natalia Pierandrei. According to her it was inspired by my dolls. I definitely want a print of it for my house.It's interesting the way Nati and I met.Serendipity is a good way to describe it. Three or maybe four years ago i found her work by chance in a compilation book of fairy artists. I thought it was some of the most amazing contemporary art i've ever seen and she instantly became an inspiration of mine. I checked out her website faithfully every week and was so infatuated with her artwork that I began emulating it with my own.Her painting had a fundamental impact on my style.It became a part of it actually as my own artwork matured and became what it is today. I absorbed it into my bloodstream and now it lives within me and is therefore a part of every porcelain doll i make.I wanted to write her for years and say how much she influenced the course of my genre, but i couldn't bring myself to do it for some reason. I didn't want to sound lame, I guess. Until one morning a couple of months ago; I was checking my email and was still half asleep when i saw this strangely familiar-looking name in my inbox. I opened the email and discovered that this person wanted to order a doll. And as i sleepily stared at the name trying to figure out how i know this person...........my eyes suddenly widened in disbelief and i was instantly jerked awake by the realization of who it was that wrote this email. To me. And then i squealed with joy while biting down on my knuckles for about 5 minutes. And then bounced around my bedroom for a while. I responded to her by taking and emailing pictures of my sketch book with her prints glued in there. And we were both going:" Oh, my, God...."Nati said that she'd been admiring my work for quite a while herself and that it actually, actually inspired her work in turn........I couldn't believe it. We were cross-inspiring each other's artwork without even knowing it! Our work was already present in each other's......styles. It just blew my mind.We became instant friends and now we're working on a book together. I'm hoping to visit her in Rome soon and meet her in person. I would love it if she visited me in Vancouver.I think the reason some artwork resonates with and inspires us more than other is because on some level it was always a part of our being, but we weren't able to consciously articulate it in our minds. Like an unspoken truth that we can't put our fingers on, but know nevertheless. So when we find something that inspires us, it's as if a lost piece of our soul is coming home and making us whole.Please check out Nati's site: http://www.nati-art.com/Perhaps it will have the same impact on you as it did on me.