Defining the indefinable
Below are my interpretations of some of my paintings. They are highly subjective of course; what they make me feel is purely my experience. How I define them is solely a personal interpretation. But I believe artists should always provide an elaboration of what their creations mean no matter how subjective and abstract, because if nothing, they illuminate a single path, amidst a crisscross of infinite paths and possibilities, indicating the subjective experience the artist went through, while creating it. And there will be joy in knowing what a painting means to you, is something vastly different from what it means to someone else.
And what are artforms, if not a means to communicate emotions and experience?
“We are a stranger to ourselves”
Acrylic on Canvas
“Through-out our life we constantly redefine ourselves, going through unique experiences. They tell us things about ourselves, things we never knew or things we thought we knew. But we never completely understand who we are. As we keep changing, we end up being a collections of masks; a wavering variant of ourselves to our closest friends, family and acquaintances. And sometimes, we are so absorbed in putting on the performance of our lives through this alias of ourselves; when we peek deep down into our own consciousness we are surprised by who we are.
Our brain is a collection of millions and millions of crisscrossed neurons, conducting uncountable electrical charges, constantly collecting and processing information and a plethora of chemical reactions that define everything about us; what we do, what we feel, what we think. And yet, despite all this activity and all this knowledge, we seldom know ourselves. We originate from a darkness that symbolizes the unknown. And as we progress through life, we see our true colors fading into view from the shadows of the unknown, forming the mask of who we perceive ourselves to be. And the revelation is always jaw-dropping.”
Our lives are filled with obstacles that we stumble over, challenges that force us to crawl out of our comfort zones and mistakes that we always regret making. If we rewind our lives to focus on these low points of our lives, it may seem that life is nothing but a series of unfortunate events.
And when the sun eventually shines on your face, you don’t smile because you’ve been wallowing in self pity for way too long. It’s like being adrift in rough seas on a sailing boat, being thrown about in your tiny life, bleeding and bruised, hoping and praying that it would end.
What if you didn’t just focus on the depressing little moments of your life? What if you zoomed out a little bit and realized the only reason life is tossing and turning you about is because there’s crests and troughs in a wave? You’d then realize that after a trough, comes a crest; deeper the trough, taller the crest.
So, smile in the face of adversity and sail through the high seas, knowing that your smile can carry you across the obstacles and through your mistakes, to the warm, basking sun as a battered and bruised, but a happy man.
“They will take your laughter, so smile and sail”
Acrylic on Canvas
“I am building my own empire with my broken heart”
Acrylic on Canvas
“What happens when you end a relationship? After sharing with Violet, your guilty pleasures and your dark secrets, your money and your possessions, your life and your dreams, you decide to find someone else to share everything with. You look up at the sky, at a beautiful sunset, the last few golden streak of sunlight cutting across across the dark sky with Red, someone who completes you, someone who has become a part of you. The shades of Violet in you have amalgamated to a mixture of Violet and Red . ‘This is the one’, you might think but you are wrong. Because there is still something incomplete in you, an emptiness in your heart; a few specks of white that haven’t seen color yet, that you can choose to fill with Red, Violet, or someone entirely different.
But what if the end of the relationship breaks your heart. What if, you never saw it coming because for you, the magic never ended? You don’t look at the sunset anymore because suddenly, there’s no streaks of golden light illuminating the dark grey sky. You turn around and decide to build a castle, a fortress with the remnants of your broken heart, to hide in, unwilling to open the gate for fear of breaking it more. “
We come into our lives, naïve and innocent, hopeful that the luscious greens and the beautiful blue skies and the warn yellow sun encompass a world that understands trust and honor. We hope that like a swan, we find our soulmate, who we can open our hearts out to. But sometimes, our trust is broken and our heart stolen, by a powerful predator that swoops in to prey on our innocence and helplessness. And through a moment of clarity, offered by the pain we realize that the world is not the luscious greens and the beautiful blue skies and the warn yellow sun. It’s the survival of fittest. We can’t be an innocent swan, mindful of our pristine white coats when we are surrounded by hungry eagles, with a keen eye to swoop in and scrounge out the hearts of naïve. To survive in a competitive world, where we are hopelessly outnumbered and hilariously underpowered, we must adapt.
Despite our pretty white coats and our pleasing aesthetics, we must become an eagle.
“In the world of Eagles, I wanted to be a swan. I was a fool.”
Acrylic on Canvas