Anna Bartolo

Why lambs?

It all started with French. Ornate lamb pathways.

I always loved French, I was fond of everything French, I went to courses, talked to people, watched movies, walked around Paris, breathed the Cote d’Azur. Once I walked through the streets of Paris and went into a secondhand bookshop. Instantaneously we both fall for one another. Sincerely. It’s irrevocable. This book had been waiting for me for a long time. Guess which book it was? The little one? Correctly! It was a fairly battered lamb from the Little Prince of Exupery. I went to a street cafe in Paris, ordered coffee and opened the book on a random page, inhaling her smell:

J’ai besoin d’un mouton. Dessine-moi un mouton

I need a lamb. Draw me a lamb.

Alors j’ai dessiné. And then I drew.

And further, all as in the book.

I desperately wanted to draw a lamb.

I literally saw him: soft, fluffy, with a wet black nose. With thick wool and thin fragile legs. A kind cute curly hair.

This was my first picture, and behind it, just like in the Little Prince:

– No, this lamb is already quite sickly. Draw another.

And I drew again, and it was already a big ram. With strong horns. And it started spinning. I wanted a fairy tale, I was myself and the Little Prince, and the storyteller, and the lamb. I painted a fairy tale.

And then there was England with live lambs, I stroked into their soft muzzles and rejoiced for the quenching cute, inspiration and waves of oxytoxin from their kind and tactile soft fluffiness.

Such anti-stress therapy. They playfully gambol at you with a nose and allow themselves to be hugged. And as a symbol of this trip with her relaxing lamb-therapy, I now have a pendant with a lamb. A lovely sheep with a pink bow.

And so my sheep series began, I wanted to return and come back to memories, associations with a fairy tale, Paris, Prince, England, lambs.

When I paint them, I live. I allow myself unrestrained emotions, without borders, boundaries, restrictions. I transfer all my passions, emotions and let them out with the help of a palette knife and a brush in my fantasy world.

Look closely at my lambs: here is the family – warmth, support, my great future friendly family with lamb babies. And here is passion and battle, fight, battle. There are lambs-pacification, harmony and tranquility. Lamb-trust, lamb-inspiration.

Lambs are a transfer of me and my passions inside.

Want to know what I am? What am I thinking about? Then live?

Come to my paintings, close your eyes for a minute, and then open and peer, peer, breathe, live them.

In them my mood, my battles, my losses and my victories. My wisdom, my mind and my childish naivety. In them I am I.

How long will I paint lambs?

While they are being created, they come to me until my Little Prince says:

– Yes, now this is the very little sheep. He will live long.