At first, I noticed his wild hair. Then, almost immediately, I caught sight of my future painting, the freedom of a multi-racial spirit blowing in the wind. “It will be a breeze,” I thought to myself, assessing the easeness of my future project. But little did I suspect that it would take me seven months conceptualizing and painting in three continents and morphing dozens of models in order to discover the real personality of the portrait.
Little did I know that a mysterious character on my canvas will experience 16 distinctly different identities, eventually liberating and releasing all, but the most inhibited.
This is a story of consciousness revealed through intense experiences and expressed through integrity. A story of finding contentment through honest, humble, and grateful living. All the masks of survival and their crippling beliefs, illusionary or true, and all the influences of epigenetically revealed were still dormant ancestral codes had been blown away in the wind. All the confusion, resentment, and grief have been finally released, giving way to genuine peacefulness and harmonious self awareness.
Repainting the canvas, searching for the right emotion and letting go of one face after another turned into the most grueling, the most agonizing, and the most relentless creative endeavor I have ever encountered. Yet, there was no other way of capturing the movement of silence and the inner light I was seeking. No other way of finding the true living spirit within one man.
