‘Interior - Fireside Glow’ In my teenage years, my parents had a fireplace just like this. It was the late 1970s, and my dad had brought his family back to Holland after sixteen years in Australia. I had to learn Dutch all over again — but that’s another story. He bought an old farmhouse and began restoring it. We lived in one half while he demolished the old internal cow stalls in the other. Us kids helped too, chipping old mortar off bricks so they could be reused. It took years, but the transformation was incredible. At the heart of the home stood the old stone fireplace with its heavy timber beam — our favourite place in winter. My mum made thick velvet curtains that glowed in the firelight. Years later, my wife and I were given some of those same velvet curtains for our first home. Waste not, want not — that was the way back then. This painting is memory made visible — the feeling of belonging, of starting again, and of finding warmth in both fire and family.
