We’ve long admired the stunning intricacy and beauty of Gaudi’s iconic Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and this led to an almost obsessive quest to see if you could capture such beauty in a papercut.

But where do you begin with such a staggeringly attractive building where every view almost overloads your capacity to take it in? For us, it was the view towards the altar that proved to be the most captivating for a number of reasons. Not only is it an achingly beautiful altar that combines the simplicity of the crucified Christ with a hugely ornate hanging canopy, it is also exquisitely symmetrically framed by a stunning pipe organ, itself framed by colossal carved stone pillars. The finishing touch is the liquid rainbow of colour that runs through the entire building, but which especially seems to flow across and around the altar.

In many ways this was a journey into the unknown because we simply didn’t know whether we could capture such three dimensional splendour within the rigid confines of a two dimensional papercut. It was a painstaking journey that literally took days as we traced, erased, retraced different aspects of the design, all the time having to ensure a consistency of what would remain paper, and what would need to be cut. The canopy with its intricate branches and Latin inscription itself took many hours to finalise.

The next step was to summon up the courage to begin cutting what was the most complicated and intricate design to date. Little and often was the best approach as one slip here would mean disaster but a week or so later, after many scalpel blade changes, we had successfully completed the cut. It took a further 3 months of discussing different ideas and approaches to capturing the ethereal splendour of the light in the building before we settled on a collage of acrylic spray paints that represented the main colours involved. It was only when we brought the two pieces together that we knew we’d nailed it!

Signed by the artists, ‘Lover of the light’ is a genuine 1/1 comprising an original hand cut, papercut, mounted on an original, acrylic spray painting. The finished piece is back mounted on archival quality mountboard and framed in in a black, custom-made solid wood box frame.

Framed dimensions:  625 mm (w) x 450 mm (h)

£650