Behind the painting: hope
Hello, friends!
I’m going to share a little bit about one of my latest pieces, “hope.”
This painting has a lot of meaning to me.
Or more accurately, emotion.
The reference was taken by my friend at a time where I felt so incredibly happy.
I felt so fulfilled in pretty much every aspect of my life.
This particular surf sesh I just remember feeling like I could do anything, like everything was right, like nothing could bring me down. I felt so confident, so happy, so beautiful, so brave, so strong, and so free.
However, this painting was created when I felt the opposite. When I felt pain, sadness, hurt, and exhaustion. To be honest, I was crying half the time I was painting this. Or if not crying, battling with the thoughts in my head and trying to get myself to focus for more than 5 minutes.
The whole reason I decided to paint this in the first place was because I wanted to try to create something so detailed, time-consuming, and demanding that I would be distracted from the painful thoughts raging around in my head.
I didn’t really think about it until I began, but the subject of the painting itself explores the irony of the story behind the painting.
How it was inspired by a time of happiness but actually created in a time of complete despair.
However, it also serves as a sort of encouraging reminder.
It got me thinking about how,
without the rain, there can be no rainbows.
I know, super corny but it’s true.
As absolutely incomprehensibly horrible it is to be in such a dark place, constantly battling the storm clouds of depression and anxiety, beauty and joy cannot exist without it. Light cannot exist without darkness.
In relation to surfing, without a storm, there wouldn’t be any good waves to ride.
It’s really, really hard to believe that anything good can come from suffering when you are caught in the eye of it.
Believe me, I’m there right now.
I’m gonna be straight up and say that I struggle with this to an extreme degree.
It’s hard for me to hope again when I’ve been broken. It’s hard for me to let go of good memories and experiences in order to try to move forward, because I fear I will never make more. I then fear the future and fear being broken again. I feel everything to an intense, all-consuming degree.
I have to try to remind myself that there’s gonna be a rainbow after the rain.
That the storms of pain will subside eventually and reveal something beautiful.
It’s so damn hard to see when you’re in the thick of it, but for better or worse, nothing lasts forever.
.
I hope this painting encourages you a little, too. That it finds you and speaks to you in some way.
To be honest, I struggled with it a lot. Something was wrong with the paper I used so the paint turned up looking patchy in places. I improvised most of the water and muddied up some colors.
However, I didn’t give up on it because I felt like that struggle only made it more real, reflected my current feelings, and portrayed the message I wanted to convey even more.
