Story

It was exciting to meet Ani, as I don’t hear many stories of people meeting her, so this for me was a good portrait to paint and put among my collection. Also I found it to be easy to achieve as I found myself to be the only fan waiting to meet her on her arrival into Sydney, early February 2009.

I was a little concerned about missing Ani, should I see her, as often she changes in appearance, although after about 3 hours of waiting she was very easy to spot among the crowd as she came through with some of her band. The first thing that struck me was how short she was, she really is tiny. She was holding hands with her young daughter and appeared to be very relaxed and happy. I showed her my painting and asked if she would like to sign, she was very happy to do so and she wrote a great autograph. Obviously I wanted to get a photograph with her, but it was unfortunately not to be. When I asked she told me that she didn’t like to do photographs, but was apologetic about it. What could I do?  

I thought of taking some photographs of her after she walked on, but I was afraid of upsetting her after finding her to be so polite.