Pain-stained Journals | Anthology

12 | Scribbles of life

What is people's intention when they paint? What do they look into when creating a magnificent painting?

Is it pain or a simple inspiration?

I believe it's both of those things, however, my paintings are all subject to my memories. I paint to get in touch with my memory as it is very vulnerable. Painting allows me to get those moments down on paper with various colour layouts.

I wonder when I will stop painting in bright colours.

I see my life in my paintings, making them a life of mine. Each piece describes a different memory, day, or perhaps occasion. This passion turned my life upside down due to many reasons.

When I begin, I simply sit in my seat and meditate. I try to gather as much information as I possibly can, it's not always a good journey. My thoughts pass down my mind like waves, if I would be able to recall them all at once I would explode.

Secondly, I visualise one particular moment that is of great significance and I try to choose a colour for it in my mind. I bring up my painting stand and begin searching for the right colour. It always comes easy to me to distinguish which combination of colours is good and which is not.

I start painting, it's a process. I begin within the centre, moving towards the edges. All comes natural to me, even since birth. When I was born, my parents used to buy me paper and crayons. They said the drawing was a passion of mine since the beginning.

A couple of years later, I lost my parents. It was a tragic car accident with only me as a survivor. I nearly cried myself to death watching my daddy's and mommy's lifeless body are being carried away by the medical team.

After that day, I was different. I didn't recall anything from my past apart from that accident and the fact that I loved to draw. Everything before now was a bare memory.

That's why I started painting again, it soothes my nerves, pain, and depression. This is the only thing I got with me for a lifetime, something that will never leave me alone.

I remember the first miserable days as a teenager when I started to paint. I was so clueless, just like I haven't painted anytime in my life. It was a skill I needed to recover. When I began, I felt like a butterfly, that life has just breathed into me again. I could paint endlessly, skip the lessons just to sit in my room and paint.

It was more than a passion, this was my lifesaver. Cruel people have come into my life since then. Most of them left me and stabbed me in the back when I became too mundane. I would spit on their faces if I could.

Such disrespect to me, leaving me in the darkest moments only with the thought that I have nothing left apart from my passion.

I painted those people too, those painting were cruel, and even I got to admit it. They weren't bright or colourful—they were in spit black. The darkest shade of black with no hint of grey. The pure abstraction that only a few could get a grip on. I painted most of the time, nothing was out of routine for me. Carousel of emptiness dances within my mind.

My heart was an abstract painting of mine. I painted it too with the most devilish amber red. The heart of that piece was crushed by the abstraction of a "world" Crushed to pieces, and those were laying one spiteful ground beneath the full moon. Each piece was named differently in my mind and held a specific symbol that only resembled my heart.

I have painted my mind too. It also is a dark painting. My mind is a labyrinth made from skull walls. Every wall had a different piece of the skull of each person who left me. In my mind, it was a metaphor that each person who betrayed me is dead in my imagination but stays with my mind as a skull. Within each corridor of my labyrinth, there is a sector for every thought. Each one of them that passes through my brain doesn't go unnoticed. Every new one creates a new entrance to a new corridor, and it's endless. That's why my mind is a place no one should go into, it's an aesthetic mess that one couldn't get a grip of.

My soul didn't miss an occasion to appear in my paintings. I visualised her as a crier soul. But it wasn't as simple as it sounds. On paper, a person was sitting on their knees, pleading for something that was up. The soul is praying to his heart and mind to be gentle with it. The human which resembles the soul is kneeling there, even though on the ground there is a fire and around it, there are multiple men with knives pointing right at him. The soul is not letting go and still prays, not noticing the horror around. This was an idea of a painting that resembled the battle I have inside of me. Pure war of blood and gore that no one can end.

The most recent painting of mine is the one showing my body. It didn't exactly resemble me, but an idea of a human. There is no full body displayed. Only some parts of the body, others, are shadowed by dark colours. I darkened the parts that I hated about my body. The full painting looked like a mosaic made of black, white, and grey. The body was laying on the ground lifeless with white eyes opened wide. The parts of my body that were visible were covered in tattoos, countless small ones. Each of them had a meaning in my heart that I didn't tell anyone. Tattoos which are an abstraction of my memories are a part of my body, they are drawn into it and can't be removed. It is just like that with my memory, I can't get rid of it even though.

My death was one of a kind painting. It looked like a simple gravestone with a sentence written into it.

"She was not born yet". The sentence could have multiple meanings. The one that I accept and love is the one that—Life has never breathed into me, not once, that it all was an illusion. I was always dead. Death spread in my mind, body and soul. Each of them was just a painting of a dead body.

All of those paintings created me—the Beloved child everyone seemed to betray later or sooner.

This is a memoir of me and my painting process. I wrote it to have an impact on the world. For me, it is something that allows people to see me as someone who went on a journey and never came back. Every painting is subject to perspective. For example, I look at an apple, is it in colour and I recall it is a fruit. Someone without money sees it and desires it, but will never have it. I see a home as a place to live. The other person sees it as a place to live with their family.

Real life is dull, that's why we tend to go straight into our imagination, to the world beneath the real one. I don't call it heaven or hell. It is something purely up to someone.