The painting encompasses my memory of many kisses: gradually getting closer, while sometimes feeling remote, and at times showing different versions of ourselves and meeting again in this way.  I used paintings of Goya, Da Vinci and Masaccio as references to create the composition and layers.
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The AI-generated image answered the prompt: "Please create a photograph that could have been the reference for this painting".

Helena Vallée-Dallaire is a contemporary visual artist trained in the classical tradition of the Old Masters. After studying at Studio Escalier in France, the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, and the Grand Central Atelier in New York, she completed her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2018. She is a recipient of various prizes and honours, including three grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Her work has been exhibited across North America, including at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Quebec Parliament, Linda Warren Projects Chicago, Mexico City's Fundacion Sebastian and Cámara de los Diputados,  and the San Francisco Art Institute.
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Her practice explores how we build our personal narratives and convictions based on experience, memory, and influences. Her current work synthesizes personal events, art history, and observation into novel compositions of "selective memory," which she places in dialogue with multimedia, such as recorded interviews, generative AI images, and writings.