This painting is from a picture I took while I was visiting France. I loved the reflections of the clouds in the river and I started contemplating my life. Looking at the sky reflected in the water reminded me that I was in France only temporarily and that soon I would be on a plane back to the US with another sky, other clouds, other rivers.

When I got back home, I wanted to start reintroducing collage in my paintings again. The small stone wall in the foreground of the image seemed like a good place to use my collection of used french stamps. To emphasize the perception of distance, travel, and separation, I mixed the stamps with oil paint to achieve a feeling of contrasting and separate worlds since paper and oil paint are two mediums that do not mix with each other. In this case, I had to protect and fix the stamps on the canvas with a special glue that was compatible with oil paint. This is one of my favorite paintings: seeing it makes me muse about my bicultural daily life, and all the complexities of being both French and American.