This portrait commission is to be a gift to my husband for our wedding anniversaries (we had 3 wedding dates). All our weddings were culturally vastly different, but one date was just for the 2 of us as we ‘eloped’ to legalise the matrimony. As I’m originally from South Africa and he is originally from India, the 3 weddings took place in 3 different parts of the world: Sydney, Seychelles and Cape Town. We met in and have been living in Dubai for more than 12 years – we refer to Dubai as ‘THE SANDPIT’. We live in the desert, in which Dubai as concrete jungle was built with brick, marble and gold by man. Nothing is really ‘natural’ but rather ingeniously man-made and always has to be the tallest, biggest, highest and best ‘in the world’ – which in essence can be very ‘fake’. Over time we’ve learnt to see some beauty in the all-consuming daily paradoxes – we’ve come to celebrate our journey through the concrete jungle and venture out of the sandpit very often as we travel loads as often as possible. When at home, we always have the AC on full blast – as you do when you live in a desert where it gets hotter than 50 degrees Celcius in Summer. I make our home an igloo, which my husband HATES as he says he needs to wear an arctic suit to survive in his own home, whilst outside our cars melt from the vicious sun. He is a full-blown ‘techie’ – our house runs on alexa. His favourite TV series is THE WIRE, whilst my idea of fun is yoga or reading my books or forensic articles whilst lying by the sea. Would be amazing if you can draw THE WIRE logo on a hoodie / t-shirt you draw. At home he constantly wears a WIRE t-shirt to death. You can mail me if you have any questions or anything is unclear or if you’d like other reference pics: jeannefouche@outlook.com
