“The soul is the preening of an angel’s wing that has the courage to fly.” Lelia Mossora
Some time ago on a trip to India I met Vardan, an Ayurvedic doctor. We chatted, he did some tests and had me fill out a form with detailed questions about my physical appearance, emotions, feelings. At one point being confused I asked for a mirror. He looked at me sad and amazed: “Don’t you know what you look like?”, I whispered: “I don’t have time to analyze myself too much”. It made me think, I felt alienated, disconnected from myself. I realized that the best way to discover myself, to connect with myself, is through painting and not by painting as I always did but by painting myself. There is a very close connection between inside and outside, between body and soul. It took a few years before I had the courage to meet myself.
The work is part of the series “Self-Love – A Journey to Self-Discovery”, being the one that opens the series. The image of the work came to my mind as I was returning from Luxembourg in December 2018. I knew then that this would be my next theme. The pose I captured in the work is the position I sit in during my moments of dreaming, relaxing, sometimes sleeping, the position where I manage to feel my soul. I started with the obsession for perfection, the exaggerated care for details, the fear of exposing myself, of putting my soul on a tray, I went through the exercise of sitting with myself every day, of memorizing the way I look, the way I feel everything, without hiding, the moments of freedom, of giving up self-criticism, finally reaching the freedom to paint, to paint myself. The long lesson of patience, helped me be closer to my soul, discover a part of who I am, what I am and what I feel. The work is a testament of whom I was when I painted it and an exercise in being able to feel and heal myself. I am constantly moving and transforming, perhaps if I revisit the theme I will see myself differently.
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