And Remember… You Wanted This. (Nov 2023)

Stillness (Oct 2023) by ToriaManning

And Remember… You Wanted This.

I always found great discomfort when losing parts of myself, especially if it was obvious that doing so would not result in a beneficial trade-off. Losing chunks of my limbs and heart was an excruciating experience. However, I had not discovered true pain until I began losing my mind and my person during the cycles constructed by my precious beloveds.

The woman that I am eventually found Godly stillness in the face of chaos and disarray, when all my loves attempted to swallow me whole. With tears streaming from their bewildered eyes, they screamed out in disturbing unison that they did not want to but were compelled to do it by the voice of the faceless and the song and dance of the flawless wolves they had known long before they met me.

I have always been unimpressed by the faceless and the wolves, I detested their tunes and abhorred mimicking their movements. Deep down, I knew that if you could master their art, they would have you believe that you are gods. But all this would be an effort to make you easily digestible and distract you from noticing the teeth slowly sinking in. It was apparent to me that these delusions persisted until you either failed them or realised at the very end of your life that you were yet another powerless mortal at the mercy of an evil that existed long before you were even a concept.

Clearly, I knew too much, and they hated me for not being so easily blinded by their ‘charm’. 

Stillness

These last ten years when I prayed for peace, I always envisioned that its arrival could only be perceived tangibly. I thought it would look like my life halting to a calm, no more hearing or living sad stories, no more strife or existential queries. I thought it would look like having joy in being and living, so I actively ordered my life in accordance, eagerly waited for the signs and theorised that all the problems I faced would go away when they emerged.

I spent so much time searching and planning towards the arrival of peace that I could not recognise it and foolishly looked right past it even when our worlds collided. When I realised that I missed a step and had to start over, I hated everything the journey entailed and was thoroughly filled with despair but would coerce myself into repeating the search since it was likely that I failed because I was not diligent, careful, or desperate enough the last time. It would take years to see that I was never going to find what I was looking for because I kept searching in flawed and empty spaces. I fought for ideals that held no true inherent worth and believed they were fulfilling because of the value that I ascribed to them. I lost chunks of myself each time I threw myself down in worship of these ideals and every time I strove to keep the veil of fantasy from lifting.

Truthfully, I did know better, but my awareness alone was sadly not enough to lead me to wise decisions. Now I am choosing to work on understanding that true peace is connected to the decisions I make in the face of chaos and tumult and accepting that it is not sourced from anything an earthly system can offer.

When It Rains. (Dec 2016)

When It Rains Victoriadeyemi

When it rains.

Where does real strength come from?

The painting was inspired by my peaceful state of mind, I used mostly pastel colours, which is a first for me. I was mainly thinking about what it really meant to be strong. Drawing from my experiences, I think that true strength is accepting the people that genuinely want to help us. True strength is having the humility to believe and the willingness to grow. True strength is holding a mirror to our image every now and then.

I think it is wrong when people say ‘true strength comes from within’. It is implausible to suggest that the origin of strength is ‘within’ when strength is not an intrinsic value. Strength does not come from ‘within’ it is just formed there. We are all born weak, defenseless, vulnerable and dependent. We each have our individual characteristics that make us different and react in different ways to certain situations. However, it is predominantly our experiences that form and develop us; our experiences trigger the fight or flight notion in our minds. Our experiences may be caused by the natural order of things, they may be self-inflicted or caused by others. But we can only develop strength when we make the most out of our experiences by appreciating them for what they have to teach us and appreciating the available help. We can only develop strength when we stop indulging in isolated thinking and self-pity.

Yellow And Green: To X and others (Sept 2016)

 

Yellow and Green By Victoriadeyemi. Dedicated to X 

Chalk and Acrylic.

Dedicated to X

Yellow and Green

Yellow and green like the natural valley underneath your sternum.
Yellow and green because I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Yellow and green like growth and mutual reliance.
Yellow and green because I have trusted you with so much and yet so little.
Yellow and green like when the hills kiss the sun.
Yellow and green because this ultimately came, without much thought or inquiry.

Dedicated to those who happened into my life and managed to stay in.

Interpersonal relationships: Being in charge but also leaving enough room for the unknown.

Relationships may sometimes seem overly centred around trying to make things work. The level of difficulty of this is often dependent on one’s ability to tolerate and willingness to understand. It is almost common knowledge that you cannot choose your biological family but you can choose your friends. However, some friends happen to you like an unforeseen event. Sometimes they are disastrous, even catastrophic and other times a wonderful surprise. You end up going through or coming out of such experiences with thoughts like ‘what just happened?’

For the most part of life, we do not have a choice with regards to a majority of stuff that happens to us. For instance, the people we were born to, the struggles we were born to deal with or other circumstances we found ourselves in.

We may not really have a say when it comes to the people that happen into our lives, the ones we fall in love with, the ones that hurt us, the ones that we have to work with or those who become family members along the line. However, we do have a great amount of discretion when it comes to deciding who stays in. We just need to be wise with how we use this choice.

 

Let It Go. (June 2016 )

Let it go by victoriadeyemi june 2016

I think June 2016 so far has been the craziest month, I moved my entire life back to the UK and the UK decided (against my will) that it wanted to leave the EU. June required a lot of adjustment. Life will carry on, maybe not as usual but it wou.

Let it go is mainly about the act of forgiveness; a topic I was sort of exploring right before I left France. I guess it followed me to England and inspired its own post.

Let it go.
The shadows from our past may haunt us, deeply rooted in our veins; they use unforgiveness as nourishment.
The most fertile soil for such a thing.
It’s vines are like puppet strings.
It sprouts teeth not flowers.
Baring down, they sink in and steal.

However, God has called us to be free, not chained by these things.

Who knows?
Maybe such events needed to have exsisted?
Maybe this was the thing that made you who you are today.

Exoskeletons and Wallpapers

Exoskeleton, is the second time I’ve used paint on canvas in France, It took me 4 days minus the days when I waited for the paint to dry. I think it has been a while; the last time I ran wild on canvas. It was definitely inspiring and kind of liberating. I love it, when I turn the canvas into landscape, its like a river in the wall created from touch.  My only regret is that the canvas was not big enough, for this piece I needed more room.

Exoskeletons and Wall papers.

“… who lied and told you that you died when you stopped breathing?”

My exoskeleton fed off anxiety, fear, rejection, tears and grew into this uncontrollable thing.
It itself was not a lie, but it was a potent liar.
Potent because all of its lies were logical.
So much so, that believing them became a necessity.

It taught me:
That I could never be in control of myself because humans are machines fueled by motivation which in turn is controlled by emotions.

By that reasoning I couldn’t ever trust myself.

That happiness does not exist;  it was strictly out of our reach because humans are naturally selfish and inherently evil.

Thus by justification all systems fabricated by people are evil.

This taught me to trust in nothing and in no one, which wasn’t very hard, because it was all logical.

When it taught me not to trust God, I stumbled.
I stopped breathing. I thought to myself, this is it.

“But who lied and told you that you died when you stopped breathing?”

Tales From the Children of the Light (Deception) Aug2015

Deception (2) victoriadeyemi

Deception was made with acrylic paint, but I used poster colour as the base for just her skin. Everything from her wide set eyes to the colours and the positioning of the flowers were carefully thought out because it was all supposed to be symbolic. Which is very uncharacteristic of me, I usually go with the flow.

On the horizon he created the…

morning stars.

Light came and darkness did not understand it. It fled.

We knew, we told ourselves that we knew but we didn’t, because although we knew, we did not understand.

And when we saw the stars and were fearful, we said we knew but we did not because we did not understand.

Without understanding we couldn’t see and there was more darkness. Thus in the confusion we were weak and sinned and we started to know less but were adamant that we knew.

We took the darkness and shrouded ourselves in it. But the darkness took so much from us; including our sight. And then we became afraid.

We called upon his name and though he was angry and could not look at us, he wrought for his name’s sake.

So that we may know that He Is GOD.

As soon as he showed us the light, we were delighted and could say with certainty that we knew.

But as it was handed to us we took the light in one hand and stroked the warm, comforting and familiar surface of darkness with another.

And we said now we know but we need to say one last goodbye to this thing that mercilessly hurt us. We made excuses to be near it again, because it confused and intrigued us.

Again we fell and darkness covered us and gross darkness covered our eyes and made our bones weak; It continued to steal from us.

But it couldn’t steal our lives, because of his grace and because of his name, because nothing would happened until he agreed to it.

In the end we said we were still alive because we knew.

However;

we did not know, we don’t know, we don’t understand.

Tales from the Children of the Light (Wild Things) Oct 2015

Wild things victoriadeyemi

Wild Things is the first time I have used paint on canvas since summer. I find acrylic paint a lot harder to use than chalk and even oil paints; because it isn’t as obedient or flexible. But only acrylic paint could translate into this on canvas and the more I use it, the more I find new ways to deal with it. I think the beauty of this piece are her eyes, I think they are powerful and defiant but also dead. They are capable of telling the whole story.

Time and time again, I have told myself that…
I am a wild thing.

I will never be tamed.
I never want to be caged.

Wild things cannot be contained because they will eventually venture out.
Wild things cannot be owned because they have no regard for authority.
Their spirit remains uncrushed, defiant.
And you can see it in their eyes that they hate you.

Wild things can be loved.
But you shouldn’t ever love a wild thing.
It would shatter your heart and leave with half of the pieces.

However, no one obeys this solid rule.
They are continually disappointed when they find out that I slipped out through their fingers yet again .

And I, hurt because I never remember that it is in man’s nature to want to own wild things. Especially when he loved it.

So, in trying to avoid being hurt or caged, I created my own impenetrable fortress.
Wherein I was a merciless master, a ruthless warden and an obedient prisoner.
There was no escape, no matter where I went, I kept running into myself.