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Reverse Painted Glass Mirrors
By Laurids Gallee, Austria/Netherlands

 

On a recent trip to his family's summer home in the Austrian mountains, artist Laurids Gallee discovered a cache of his childhood drawing. Built by his grandfather, in the countryside, near a village of craftspeople, the home was, and still is, full of local handicrafts, including religious icon paintings in reverse painted glass. The craftsman who executed them was still active in the village, so the artists reconfigured his drawings and brought them to the artist to execute as mirror frames. It is a fitting visual metaphor for the mental image we carry with us of our semblance from our youth; when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we see our past, we see ourselves as we were as children.