At that time, I was heavily into Tarot cards. The first Major Arcana there is The Fool – a naive, positive young boy stepping off a cliff into the complete unknown, showing his freedom and trust in life.
This piece was the exact opposite of that.
There was a lot of bullying, violence, and negativity in my life back then. I was constantly on edge. I very often stood on that psychological, suicidal cliff edge. I just needed to pour my emotions out somewhere, to create an image that would pull out those inner wounds I once experienced. I didn’t want to depict myself or another boy in the painting – the character of a little girl fit much better here.
Back then, it was one of my most detailed works. You can clearly see the fingers in the background pointing at her like ghosts, mocking and judging. And she stands on the cliff, taking a step downwards. From her fragile hands, she drops her only friend – a plush bunny. She drops him so she wouldn’t drag him down to the bottom with her.
I tried to convey that inner state when you are abandoned by everyone and needed by no one. When the whole world is against you, when you are lost in yourself and don’t know where to step next. In moments like that, the only way seems to be stepping down. After all, the world becomes so beautiful when you’re falling at tremendous speed – everything blurs. What was painfully concrete just becomes spilled color.
This painting was different. Real pain was put into it, and just like the first piece, this one was also marked with my blood. It hung in my room for a long time. I kept looking at it.
Until one day. I took sandpaper, sanded off those fingers pointing at her, and drew butterfly wings on the girl.
The next moment, I was sitting in front of the fire, watching this painting turn into ashes. That way, I released the energy from it and let that pain turn into the wind. Honestly, I’ve probably burned half of my old collection.
Do I regret losing it? Partially. It’s a pity for the time and hard work put into it, but mostly because I could never recreate a painting like this again.
An event happened in my life that damaged my hand and my eyesight. I physically can no longer paint with such fine detail as I used to. Even though my skills have grown incomparably since then, and if I could turn back time with my current experience I could create hyper-realism – now I have to create pieces of incomparably larger formats. Such fine detail, like in this painting, is left in the past.
That’s why this painting doesn’t exist anymore. Only this photo remains.
Will it be possible to buy a print of it? I have no idea yet. I will try to crop the image from this photo and print it out as a test. If I’m satisfied with the quality, I will create original-sized prints. It won’t be hard to measure its exact size, because in this photo you can clearly see its proportions compared to my hand.