In 2009, I was visiting friends on the Île de Gorée, Senegal, and in some shops I saw some reverse glass paintings, a popular art form there. I bought one called Coiffeur. My friends the introduced me to a local painter, Abbaye Barry, who demonstrated the technique for me: I draw an outline in pen and ink on one side of the glass, which becomes the back of the picture where all the work will be done. I check I am happy with the drawing by turning the glass to the front, where the image will appear reversed as in a mirror. I turn the glass back. Any problems I scrape away with a surgical knife. When I am satisfied, I add colour. I use unmixed Hambrol enamel colours, painting all the areas that are to be red, say in one go, and once it is dry, I continue building up other colours in the same way.

Monika Beisner is a German artist and illustrator based in London. She studied painting in Braunschweig and Berlin, continuing her studies at the Slade School of Art and the New School for Social Research in New York. She has exhibited internationally and is known for her illustrated editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and The Epic of Gilgamesh. She is currently working on a cycle of paintings, Daphne Variations.