How a place, memory and a practical constraint became two pastel works for collectors in Australia, without turning a reference photograph into a replica.
The work starts with a reason
A commission begins before I open a blank canvas. I need to understand why the work should exist, what the person wants to remember and how the finished piece should live in the room.
That conversation makes the commission specific. It is not an image selected from a menu, but a relationship between a person, a place and the way they will live with the work.
Finding the place inside the photograph
A past commission for collectors in Australia began with a place connected to their story. The reference photographs were low quality and blurry. I did not need to reproduce their blur or make a more accurate copy. I needed to find what they carried: blue and green lakes, a huge sky, atmosphere and memory.
We made a visual inspiration page together, gathering textures, palettes and colours. The finished pieces hold the feeling of that place without pretending to be a literal photograph.
Material decisions are part of the translation
Australian customs requirements made it difficult to send framed canvas. Stretching and framing canvas for international delivery would also have added cost and reduced flexibility.
After researching the options, we chose two soft chalk pastel pieces on paper. They could be trimmed to flexible dimensions and placed into framing already sourced there. The material choice became part of the route from my Berlin studio to the collectors’ home.
The work continues after collection
The collectors came to the Berlin studio to pick up the pieces. Later they sent photographs of the works installed in Australia. That movement is part of the history, so the commission did not end when the image was finished or payment was made.
A private commission enters a particular home. The people who live with it help shape the conditions in which it will be seen. That does not make the work less authored. It gives the authorship a real relationship to answer to.
A commission can become part of the archive
These examples are not a fixed catalogue. They show questions a project can hold: a remembered landscape, a domestic space, a palette, a body, an object or a visual problem that needs to become exact.
My role is to translate the reason for the work into a form with its own life, material decisions and pressure. The work remains personal to the client without becoming anonymous, and remains recognisably Sketchy Shona.
Credits
- Original Sketchy Shona studio editorial based on the supplied commission examples and the earlier Australia commission record.