Film 50′ min 2026
The Brush in Your Hand
Charlotte Dumas: “When I used to call home, my father often answered with the words: ‘One moment…’”
Then I would hear the tinkling sound of his paintbrush in a water glass, followed by the silence of his concentration. He always had to finish painting something; stopping was impossible. He made paintings of building facades. His work was detailed and almost indistinguishable from the slides he used for reference. Over the course of his life, he refined his skill, using the transparency of watercolors to translate light and shadow onto paper. In a way, the facades mirrored his character: he was introverted and preferred to stay in the background, remaining an observer.
The Brush in Your Hand is a portrait of Dumas’s father, the painter Peter Dumas, and her youngest daughter, Ivy. Ivy shares her grandfather’s creative mind as well as his tenacious character. While we come to know Peter through his work and fragments from his diaries, Ivy creates a cardboard house for mice made of fabric. When she’s not around, a cat occupies the rooms she has built. On the nightstand in one of them, she leaves a note saying: “Mom, dad, I want to live on my own, but also not.”
In this imaginative film that weaves together past and present, Peter and Ivy’s worlds intersect. As the film gradually unfolds, the filmmaker’s own role—as both daughter and mother—emerges with growing clarity. The Brush in Your Hand reflects on creativity, its inherent idiosyncrasy, and the way it transcends generations, sometimes taking form only fleetingly.
This film has been supported by The Mondriaan Fund, The Dutch Film Fund and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.
