She battled for her visa – and counted every dollar to make the trip. But she is there now. She can almost hear her father’s voice – soft as a summer breeze – whispering in her ear, my little artist, pick up your pencils and draw another picture. It is one of her most intimate memories, her most tender memories.

But it started earlier than that. It started when she was five and he took her for the first time to the museum.

Together, hand in hand, they walked in the golden Hermitage palace. She tugged his hand with excitement, skipped and sauntered through the galleries – always asked for more. He never said no.

Twenty years later, she still remembers the feeling that filled her as she was standing in front of one precise painting – the painting she’s standing in front of right now. Today, she would describe it as an unveiling, an opaque gauze ripped out from her eyes, yet as a child she only felt her heart beating faster – harder. She only felt the world stutter and pause.

She wanted that. She wanted to be that, do that, create that – the distinction was unclear.

That day, as soon as they came back home, the five-year-old sprinted to her room and started drawing. Her father signed her up for art classes and took her back to the museum as often as he could. And every time, they halted and discussed the masterpiece that had moved her like no other. It became their ritual.

When she was eleven, they had to leave Russia and return to New York. Her father died two years later of a heart attack.
She did not forget, though – neither the painting nor her father’s words.
She never stopped making art.

And now, at the age of twenty-five, she has come back to pay homage to the canvas that first made her pick up a brush – and that will forever retain some part of her father – of her youth.

Lilac Bush, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.