In the footsteps of form and imagination
Some moments feel like a small miracle. As if time stands still for a moment, or perhaps moves in a circle.
My youngest daughter graduated from SintLucas. She's a "SINT" just like me. Not that we used to call ourselves that after graduation, but I think it's a nice name, and after all, I'm one too :-)
The same school where, in 1986, I spread my creative wings. Where I learned to see, feel, and create. Where, as a young woman, I walked around with my head full of ideas and my hands full of sketches, in the Display, Decorating, and Advertising department.
The '80s… that meant designing without a cell phone, without a laptop, without AI. Everything was done by hand. With rulers, utility knives, markers, colored pencils, typewriters. Communication was face-to-face. You called a landline or wrote a note.
And yet, or perhaps precisely because of it, everything felt so real. The connections, the conversations, the friendships. The smell of cardboard and glue. The noise of the workshops. The silences in the studio. I look back on it as the best school years I've ever known.
And yet that wasn't the end of my Lucas story.
In 2016, I returned. Not as a girl, but as a woman. A mother, an artist, searching for new forms. I took Photoshop classes there, a leap into the digital world.
Where I once worked with scissors and glue, I now discovered the power of pixels and layers. It felt like learning a new language. And at the same time, like coming home. Because creativity knows no fixed form; it grows with you.
Now I work with both worlds: digital and analog. With brush and tablet. Intuitive, free, colorful. Anything goes.
And now she's there. My daughter. On her own path.
Graduated as an interior designer.
With her own ideas, her own style. But with that same fire in her eyes.
We sometimes talk about how different things were back then. And yet, they connect. Because design continues to play with space, feeling, and atmosphere. Whether you do that with a pencil or on a screen. The essence is the same: imagining what isn't yet visible. Giving shape to feeling.
That she found her creative home where I found mine, even twice, moves me. It feels like a quiet handover. Not something I imposed on her, but something that was passed down naturally. A thread of wonder, a love of detail, and the desire to make something beautiful of the world around you.
I'm proud. Of her, of who she is. And a little bit of myself too, of that girl back then and that woman now.
Because sometimes, when you look back, you suddenly see how far you've come.
And how beautiful it is when your child walks with you for a while.
Grateful 🧡
