Prince by Blule

Every morning, barely awake, still in the bed, with one eye opened, I check my phone (yeah I know...). Maybe there was an online sell overnight, or maybe a customer needs support. Most of the time, it's business as usual.

This one morning of June 2014 was different though. There was a short email, from someone claiming to be Prince's manager and asking if they could buy an image I painted. Some emails have a way to wake you up even faster than a bunch of kids running in the room raging for breakfast.

After calling a couple friends to verify the name and email address were legit -- and after trying to keep my cool -- I engaged in the conversation. Twenty-four emails and a couple weeks later, Prince had indeed bought the full copyrights and the original painting. (it is a nice feeling to write "Paisley Park" on a shipping label. And yes, I hand-wrote this one, savouring every. single. letter).

One would consider it enough luck for one gal.
Well, it seems it wasn't:
A year later, Blule was all over the place during his concert in Toronto! Prince was wearing one of my design on his t-shirt, and look, behind him, the illustration he bought from me, in full screen.
This was it, I could live happily and funkily ever after…

A bit later, following up on the Toronto concert, Prince also bought the copyrights to this second image.
Of course, this was quite exciting: two is better than one, right?

But the really exciting aspect of this was that this also marked the beginning of a work relationship.

We started working on images for the band, 3rd eye girl, that would match the first image they bought. To this date, I'm still not sure what they would be used for.

This was a very different kind of work: these ones were commissioned. Prince gave feedback, which quickly lead to a question: what do you do when you disagree with his feedback? "Prince, shut up, you don't know what you're talking about!" ;-D
I'm very happy with the final images, which were mostly the first version I showed.

He never got to buy them though, the process was just long, he went on tour, and probably forgot all about it. I was secretly hoping he would buy them to gift them to Ida, Hanna and Donna.
I got to meet Ida, mostly thanks to this, and I know Donna and Hannah have their own copies too.

The next project was a lot more ambitious.
I was part of a small group of people (four I believe) that were to propose a redesign of the main studio in Paisley Park.

This one tragically never got to see the light of day.
I blogged about it, click below to read the full article.

A few month back, I asked my Instagram followers what was their love story with Prince.
The replies were A-MA-ZING.

I also realised that I had never written about mine, so I did.
Click below to read the full story.

More recently, the wonderful team at Paisley Park asked me to create an image for the one-year anniversary of the Museum.

I was also thrilled to learn that they would also use the first image Prince bought to print tshirts.

Read my blog post about it, with pictures and links to their store.

This is my utlimate tribute to Prince, a magnificent, limited edition, numbered, book of illustrations.

Foreword by Ida "bassinyourface" Nielsen.

"The BOOK....O M G!! I was so afraid to touch it! I actually put on gloves as it is THAT exquisite! Each page had me in awe and saying WOW out loud." - Rachel

Read all about how it was created and crafted