Velvet thoughts

When I had depression, I had a constant feeling of swimming blindly in a black liquid, as thick as cotton.

Since I experience synesthetic feelings, every emotion on this black and thick background had shape, colour, size, texture and opacity.

When I tried to paint this, I synthesized all shapes to basic figures, squares and rectangles mostly, but the rest of the features stayed as I had seen them in my head. First I would start a composition. My subconsciousness was looking for some kind of symmetry and order, so after a while the whole composition would change into a set of squares.

I would paint with emotions, with my brain only controlling technical stuff, and without a major involvment of my will. Sometimes I would spend half a year on one picture because the colour or the texture weren’t right. The effect was never exactly as I’d anticipate it. It was the only way I could express emotions, and nobody knew this until now (I told a friend).

And when most people see my paintings, they usually say that they’d paint something like this in half an hour and it’s not real art because it doesn’t show people or objects.

I stopped painting a few years ago, because the feedback I was getting was depressing. I’d like to start again, I think.