The Mists of Youth: Oil Paintings

Artist’s statement:
The series of works presented here portrays the state of alienation as a pervasive human condition, in particular, the one that engulfs parents and children during the long battle with drug addiction. Books have been written, talks have been given, but one thing only needs to be highlighted for children to remember: their addiction affects the entire family.

For this show titled The Mists of Youth, I expressed my compassion for those who became victims of self-destruction. With every gentle brush stroke, I tried to paint their lament, their sense of helplessness when realizing that they made a bad choice, and they are heading to a lost cause. My challenge was to capture the unconditional love parents and kids have for each other regardless the dark circumstances. Even when the parents themselves lose their own sanity under pressure, they, in fact, embrace the unknown just to be together until the end. When anything else fails, Love becomes the ultimate cure.

Being young has never been easy. The age of impulsive behavior as you struggle to discern good from evil, that time when you are “right to be wrong” in trying to define yourself, that impatience of heart and the fact that you don’t have the perception of time, all these can cause self-estrangement. In my works, I am interested in painting emotional states of mind. There are no specific shapes or colors for fear, stubbornness, insecurity, temptation, deceit, anxiety, the desire to do something unwise and so on. Also, there is love and pain.

“Valley of The Sorrow” is a visualization of that indefinable and frail moment of renunciation when being so young, alone and overwhelmed by adversities you dismiss your life and surrender. I wanted to investigate that weakness morphing into disease and growing inside your entrails paralyzing any primordial instinct to escape. I wanted to analyze that moment when you become numb and empty after losing the battle to exist.