I LOVE YOU, in multiple languages

Love has no borders. This painting gathers the phrase I love you from 99 languages, hand-painted in day-glow pigment that seems to float above the linen. The vibrancy is deliberate: a way of infusing multinational, multilingual love straight into the subconscious, bypassing division and embedding a simple truth—love is universal.

Hubby’s exercise in painting these phrases became an exercise in borderless loving: extending care and connection to those beyond one’s family, beyond one’s nation, beyond the familiar. As Howard Thurman gifted us in his poem, “I want to be more loving in my heart! It is often easy to see it with my mind, and give assent to the thought of being loving. But I want to be more loving in my heart!” We can do this beyond all walls, oceans, languages, and beliefs.

No matter who you are or where you come from (yes, even for the extraterrestrials, who likely have our languages encoded by now), the message levitates off this piece and lands within you. I love you. Again and again, in every tongue, until it becomes the atmosphere itself.

Placed in your home or a shared space, this painting becomes both an affirmation and an invocation—a radiant reminder that love, when spoken, multiplies across every boundary.

Part of the series "Mantras"

Hubby’s broad range of text-based work in the Mantras series shares the use of positive, aspirational verbiage, which aim to uplevel attitudes and behavior. They are both a physical manifestation and a passive sender of experience dependent neuroplasticity, changing neural pathways through positive reinforcement.

Original artwork by Bettina Hubby

Flashe Acrylic on Linen

22" x 28"    

2020