‘Once upon a time travel, I found myself in art’….Livonne

We are all supposed to have a doppelganger.. Someone who looks so much like us that we could be excused for thinking we had a twin, however many years apart we may have lived. About 3 months after my daughter was killed, I went into a restaurant and saw a painting of her as an angel. I mean identical in every way. Her little fat knees, her fingers, her red hair. This little cherub was absolutely identical to my daughter Aimee. My knees buckled when I saw the painting. It’s hard to show the likeness when the images are in different poses and different facial expressions but trust me, this child was identical. I found out later that it was called L’Amour et Psyché, enfants and was painted around 1890 by William Adolphe Bouguereau. I became a bit obsessed with it and the artist himself. As time has gone on, many of his paintings have a strong familiarity about the characters which I’d like to explore further.

When I went to Ireland in 2014, I saw a young man on the ferry who was the spitting image of my son Stuart. I was so gobsmacked by the similarity that I took a few sneaky photos of him, then went and introduced myself so I didn’t look quite so much like a creepy stalker if anyone saw me. I wrote about it here as I was amazed at the likeness, which has grown more as Stuart has aged.

My brother in law called in one day asking what I got up to after hours. I had no idea what he was talking about until he produced a magazine that had ‘me’ in a bondage outfit. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Seriously, she was so like me, even I had to convince myself it wasn’t me. Thankfully, I don’t have a photo of that one for comparison lol. We are all supposed to have a doppelganger somewhere. I guess there are only so many faces to make, so we have to keep reusing the same ones over time.

During Covid, we saw lots of different versions of people recreating famous works of art with what they had at home. We also saw such a renewed interest in art galleries as they went online and we had so much more time on our hands (unless you were an essential service). Suddenly doppelgangers in art were popping up everywhere over social media. Poor Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) had so many popping up that he must have been so sick of them. Some were very like him, others just had Harry Potter style glasses on. Still, they were a source of, at best, great interest and at the least, amusement.

I have a friend who reminds me of Adele by Gustav Klimt, one of my other favourite artists. It seems there are doppelgangers in art everywhere. Are they ghosts from our pasts? Long lost relatives or simply a mere coincidence? Who knows but they certainly intrigue me, regardless of what they are.

The fantastic Blue Fringe Arts couldn’t have their usual full house during Covid for the awards event, so we made masks to put on chairs to fill it up a bit and make it a bit of fun. I decided to do Vincent Van Gogh as a mask. Everyone who saw it thought I’d made a mask of my son, Lachlan. A while afterwards I was doing some felting and made a doll of Vincent Van Gogh. Again, everyone said it was Lachlan. So, finding a common thread here, I gave in and decided I would make an image of Lachlan as Van Gogh, when the time was right.

In 2022, I took a trip to Perth and it just so happened that the Van Gogh experience was on there, so we went to have a look at it. I managed to get photos of his recreated bedroom as a background image for what I was planning. That wasn’t an easy task as there were people everywhere but I finally managed to get the room empty for 2 seconds to take the shot. When I got home, I started to plan what I would do. The trouble was, the more I looked at Van Gogh’s self portraits to get some inspiration, the more inspired I got. (These were the final inspirations for what I would end up doing.)

I had originally only planned one photo of him in the room but then I saw a self portrait of Vincent in his bed, another sitting on a chair, another of him painting. Then I saw some images of other people he had painted who also looked a bit like Lachlan, so I wanted to use them too. Lachlan was about to shave his beard off, so we used that day as portrait day. Full beard in one pic, slightly shorter in the next, goatee and moustached in another until we got to clean shaven. The three photos are all of Lachlan as are the 2 portraits on the wall. I, of course, wanted to replicate the feel of The Starry Night painting of Van Gogh and below is the final outcome.

I can’t wait to do more doppelganger portraits as they pop up in my life, as I’m sure they will. But for now, I’m about to go and chop down a daisy bush in my garden that is out of control so I will bid you a good day.

Happy finding your doppelganger…Livvy xxx