(Vlaardingen) Armed with two brushes between her toes and two others in her hands, extreme concentration drawn on her face, Rajacenna van Dam, a 31-year-old Dutch artist, paints ten paintings simultaneously in a museum in the Netherlands.
An astronaut, a self-portrait, a panda with glasses and seven other paintings, placed upside down on the floor, on a table and on two easels, see the light of day under the brush strokes of the young woman with curly hair.
It started as a joke, a challenge to counter boredom, but today, it’s serious: arms and legs outstretched, a brush stroke here, a brush stroke there, Rajacenna , her stage name, is a perfectionist and has planned all her actions in advance in her head.
“I work a little on a painting, then I come back to another painting, so I constantly shift my concentration between all the paintings,” Rajacenna, originally left-handed, explains to AFP.
“Five years ago, I started painting with two hands, for the challenge and to go faster, and I discovered that I was ambidextrous,” she recalls.
And one day, a journalist jokingly asked if she could also paint with her feet.
She tries, “for fun”. After mishaps with tape between her toes, she tries modeling clay to trap the paintbrush. She finally got there, published a video on the internet which went viral and the orders started to come in.
The difference between hand-painted and foot-painted paintings is not visible. Except for her.
“I definitely see a big difference because it’s a little less precise,” she says, invited for this performance by a museum in her hometown, Vlaardingen, in the south of the Netherlands.
” Extraordinary ”
PHOTO JOHN THYS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Rajacenna van Dam, a 31-year-old Dutch artist, paints ten paintings simultaneously in a museum in the Netherlands.
“I get bored quite quickly, so I like to challenge myself, and doing all that at the same time gives me a kind of feeling of meditation, which calms me down a lot,” says the artist, who already loved drawing as a child.
She abandoned the activity during puberty then at 16, a street designer in Italy rekindled the passion in her. Today, her online videos have millions of views, especially those where she is seen painting several paintings at the same time with her hands and feet.
As far as she knows, she’s the only one doing this. “But I hope that people will be inspired to do more things, or to challenge themselves a little more, like drawing with their feet,” says the artist, whose paintings sell for sums between 6,000 and 12,000 euros, according to his father, Jaco van Dam.
She was noticed by celebrities such as singer Justin Bieber, who called her work “amazing” when she presented him with a portrait of himself.
“It’s also very special for us as parents, she also surprises us and I don’t understand how she does it either,” Rajacenna’s father told AFP.
On the wall of the museum sits a portrait of Einstein painted by the young artist. A nod to a study of her brain conducted by Turkish-German neuroscientist Onur Güntürkün, according to which the young woman “is capable of things that neuroscience considers impossible”.
“A brain scan has previously revealed that his right and left cerebral hemispheres are three times more connected than average,” Jaco van Dam told AFP.
Enough to impress ordinary mortals who wander through the museum, like this retired couple.
“It’s extraordinary that someone is able to do this,” exclaims Anton van Weelden, 75.
“And what’s more, the paintings are very beautiful and realistic,” he says, admitting that he would get confused if he were to venture into that area. “I couldn’t even paint like that with my right hand.”