my art journey
a soulful hug of a good old friend.
a smile so warm s the color of the leaves.
falling into the wind, it’s giving you a warm kiss.
crawling into the sheets, getting covered by a calming feeling.
still fighting to glimpse at the moving estival, yet knowing it’s safe to let free.
Song: Youth by Daughter
my anger is silent, sitting deep inside of me.
waiting to be released.
it is sheltered in a cave, it didn’t have a space.
my anger is silent, not visible for you, a compact secret.
holding a dense pond, ready to fall into, ready to be consumed of.
my anger is silent, because it doesn’t want to hurt.
doesn’t want to, definitely can.
release it, and it will wreck everything around it.
with a slaughtering scream, full of revenge.
my anger is silent. it was trained to be.
don’t fool yourself thinking I forgot maybe.
my anger is silent.
now silent by choice.
but be aware: I can choose differently, too.
The best experiences hit you like a storm. You have no time to make sense out of them. You go with the flow. You don’t expect. You just say yes. You do what you feel like. You forget everything else. The best experiences nourish your soul. You feel deeply. You don’t plan them. You balance trough them. Or at least you try to. You learn from them. The best experiences are often the ones you need to let go at some point. And this is hard and hurtful. The best experiences demand you to loosen your guards and to trust. Your fears will flow up from your deepest inner. And afterwards you have such an intensity inside of you, you can barely hold it. Transform it. Make something out of it. Feel it, as hard as it is. Having emotions and being able to feel such a depth is a gift. Take it. Use it. Play with it. Throw it on canvas, mold it into words, scream it out of your heart, move it trough your body. Don’t close up. Respect your deepness, let it live.
I felt alive
I felt alive, not thinking about yesterday, not thinking about tomorrow, being pinned at the present moment
I felt alive, dwelling into your skin, discovering your skin, asking myself wether it shows your soul
I felt alive, not knowing the outcome, regardless the outcome, not thinking about the outcome
I felt alive, feeling my deepness trough discovering yours
I felt alive, wanting to know what kind of person is in front of me, what kind of parts it’ll show about me
I felt alive, loving you, yet not knowing you, getting to know me, because of you
And the moment you left, I felt dead
Just a little
Knowing it’s just a moment in my infinity
My favorite fairy tale is Alice in Wonderland. I love the imagination and how it is taken for granted. Sure, the red roses have been painted with red paint. Of course, a drink can make me taller and a pastry can make me shorter (or was it the other way around?). Why question that and wallow in fear when you can just enjoy the absolute absurdity? Sometimes I take a moment and laugh at life. Because it’s just so absurd. I like to see my life a little crazier. Often people are rigid in their everyday lives and don’t see the bigger picture. Life is just life. Either you make it fun and colorful or you stay in a gray cloud, as if wrapped in cotton.
At the same time, you also run the risk of feeling the full intensity of life if you have this attitude; I was forced to look deep inside myself in order to break out of the automatic rhythm at all. When my favorite artist CRO released the song “Märchenwald” with the artist Jolle, I put on my headphones and jumped around and danced like a madwoman to it. All of that in the morning hours before work. It tells that all fairy tales are lies. It talks about how we believed things as children that we now see differently as adults. We see the harsh reality. We see how something really is instead of believing in the fairy tales that we were told, that we told ourselves. Still we have some hope.
That can hurt. It did hurt me a lot. The transition from child to adult is not always easy. But I am very grateful for my reality, I am grateful to be alive. You do take the risk of feeling pain. Nevertheless have I found a certain beauty in reality. I am so carried away by it, that I would almost describe myself as hungry for realness. I want to experience life fully.
But I will never forget the Alice in me. Because I can choose not to.
It took a while to paint this picture. I started in April and continued sporadically. I found the proportions particularly difficult. Mixing the skin color was hell. Playing with the pink color was fun though. The idea came from the feelings described above, the song and the original sketch from my old sketchbook from about 8-9 years ago. It gave me a lot to put the old sketch on canvas and maybe take me a little bit back to that exact old time. It’s as if I looked at my old self and said “I see you and what you’re doing is good”. Through this project I have shown this old sketch and my old self a little love.
Song: Märchenwald by CRO, Jolle
the chaos in my head, 2017
lost city, 2018
Фигушка (‘figuschka’), 2019
The meaning of this gesture is something like ‘you get nothing’. I once asked my older brother what he would get me for christmas. He laughed at me and showed me this gesture. Then he asked me the same question. I told him, he’ll see 🙂
island, 2022
Or: the emptiness that screams
blue woman, 2022
This picture states a specific sadness I was feeling at the time I painted it. I was listening to a song, it said ‘clouds in the head and head in the clouds’. Suddenly this picture came up in my mind. Through painting I had the chance to transform this sadness into motivation and action.
Song: Tanz mit dem Teufel by Edo Saiya
That’s enough for now. Stay tuned.
COLE 