Polka Dot Sisters

POLKA DOT SISTERS Acrylic on Canvas | 30" × 30" | 2019

They are not smiling. They have their dolls. They have each other. That is enough.

Polka Dot Sisters is painted from a vintage photograph — the kind that surfaces in antique markets and estate sales, the kind that belonged to a family that no longer exists in the configuration it was taken in. Two girls stand together with the particular solemnity of children who have been told to stand still and are doing so with complete, slightly mutinous compliance. The younger leans into the older. The older stands her ground. Both clutch their dolls with the grip of children who understand that some things are yours and you hold onto them.

The painting is rendered in the muted, almost monochromatic tones of the photograph it came from — grey, taupe, the dusty blue of a sky that has never quite decided to be anything — interrupted by the polka dots. Hot pink circles on both dresses, painted with a pop art directness that arrives in the composition like a radio signal from the present, cutting through the past with cheerful, slightly anarchic precision. Kusama-adjacent. Completely their own.

The dolls are dark and slightly unsettling in the way that vintage dolls always are. The expressions are serious in the way that Victorian and Edwardian children in photographs always are — not unhappy, simply unperformed. Before the smile became mandatory.

Polka Dot Sisters is a painting about the bond between sisters, about childhood solemnity, about the past looking back at the present with complete composure and absolutely no interest in being nostalgic about it.

📦 Shipping & Details

• 30" × 30" original acrylic on canvas
• Signed and dated 2019
• Ships stretched on timber stretcher bars — ready to hang
• Certificate of authenticity included

One original. No reproductions. They have each other. That is enough.