I'm an atheist. And yet I live through religion. This is a monstrous sum-up of my life right now. This is the shortest way for me to describe what I see, looking back at the path I've thread on up to this year, my 26th one. I can breathe in calmly as I look, and conclude I'm proud. I could've achieved more, there's no doubt about that. I could've been closer to where I'm going, way closer. But that isn't a regret. Because I could have also not become what I already am. I could have also not found what I've already found. I look at the world around me, the people. And they haven't found it, none of them. But I have. I'm standing near the 26th milestone along the path of my life. And I have found it. Not the money, not the security, not the self-sustainability. That is an obligation for all of us to fulfill by default, as participants in civilized society. I have found something else, separate from obligations, separate from society, separate from the entire world. I have found myself.
I will gradually begin to expand on that, and hope, as I try to do so, that the outcome of this resolution will be as satisfying to me, as each of my paintings is after the brush touches it for the last time ever.
And what better way to start the story than with the very first canvas I ever touched in my life? There were MANY drawings on paper before that, loads and loads of them, but nothing ever comes close to experiencing your first contact with a canvas. I remember it, it was both familiar, as if something natural for you to come across as an artist, and yet unknown - challenging to your overall ability to create an image, because wielding a paint-soaked brush is way more uncontrollable than a mere pen or pencil. The pen and pencil listen and obey your hand, their trail isn't rebellious. While the brush, at the beginning, feels like an untamed beast, waiting to prove to you that you're actually worthless and completely untalented.
I tamed the beast though, pretty fast at that. And I made my first painting. I'd just turned 18 - the age border of a lifetime. And with that border, I passed yet another. I transferred my creations from paper to canvas.
It was an old canvas my grandfather had looted from an abandoned school building were he worked. It wasn't just a canvas too, it was a worn painting. I remember the vague remains of a green landscape and a grey sky, fading away under the burden of time, just like a real season. It was a vanishing memory, and I gave it a merciful death. It took me several days to finish my own painting ontop of the previous inhabitant of the canvas. I created Mary and Jesus, my very own first Pieta, an orthodox icon. it was fairly typical at first thought, after all I was aiming for the traditional. I meant to give it as a present to my grandparents, and it's still there, in their house, watching from the wall, on the second floor of the house, where my grandparents never go. It remains there in silent and unaging beauty, my first creation. So yes, she's traditional, but, as time passes, and I see her about once a year, she doesn't seem typical anymore. Somehow she's more alive then all the rest I've ever seen. Somehow, even then, even at the start of my path as a true painter, and even aiming for tradition, I gave her a hint of my own idea of life. I see in her eyes, and the way I've painted them to focus contemplation on the viewer, as if in response to the observer, personality and purpose of intent. I see myself in her eyes, as if I gave her willful thought. The child Jesus isn't such though, he only responds to her, he only feels her, as I intended him to do. She, however, responds to me. As she is mother to the baby, so I am father to her. A father growing old with each passing year, with her, eternally youthful, eternally able to respond to me. My undying child.
This first painting was born out of tradition and religion. And yet I'm atheist. Let that be the first step on the pathway of my story. And my fist confession to this website... and to the world. These are things that have never before moved outside my own mind. I set them free, I let go of the entitlement. Let this be my first sacrifice in the name of Art.
