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.

Uncertainty.

Things are generally not happening the way I planned them to. Furthermore, I find myself doing things that were not really in the plan. Sometimes I feel like I was more certain about how things were going to turn out when I was in year 9. Which doesn’t make any sense because I was only 14 years old. Certainty is good; I like being certain about how things are going to turn out. But I haven’t been certain about a lot of things for a very long time now. Honestly, it has been one surprise after another. And I’m not sure if I like that. This painting is uncertain because it is not what I set out to paint, these aren’t even the colours that I had planned to use. There were so many questions like what even is this? And why am I currently (unconsciously) obsessed with fire?

I was going to wait until I got back to London before I posted it, by then I would have highlighted it a bit more. Maybe it would make more sense then? Also the presentation would be a lot nicer because I would be reunited with my laptop. But what is the point of following the plan? So here you go an incomplete work fully representing my uncertainty. Whatever. I am going to watch some cartoons now.