I Love You, Dad!

I Love You, Dad! speaks about a child's longing for a father who is absent, distant, or lost.

Through a rain-covered window, we see fragile figures drawn by a child on the glass: two small figures holding the hands of an adult. Beyond the window, a solitary man is moving away — visible, yet unreachable. Beside the drawing, a child's handprint reaches towards him, but meets only the glass.

Who is the adult in the child's drawing? A father remembered or imagined as part of the family? A mother holding the children back while he leaves? Or simply a child's uncomplicated image of what a family is supposed to be?

The painting does not answer.

The painting offers no explanation for his absence. He may be someone who has died. Someone who left. Someone forced away by circumstances, work, distance or conflict. He may even be a loving father who simply cannot be there.

For adults, absence has reasons. For a child, it is simply absence.

The window becomes a boundary between closeness and separation, memory and reality, what a family is and what a child wishes it could still be. Sometimes love does not disappear when someone leaves.