The Days Are Still Twenty-Four Hours Long

For the first time in years, I feel lost.

It is strange to write those words because nothing particularly bad has happened. In fact, I think the opposite may be true. Last week I may have found what could become the project of my life as a painter. Not a project with an opening night or a closing date, but something I could still be doing twenty years from now. A project that feels less like work and more like the reason I paint.

I have only completed one portrait so far. Every spare moment I have, I find myself walking through the streets looking for people I have never met. I stop them, ask if they have a few minutes to talk and, if they accept, I paint them afterwards. Not because they have extraordinary stories or remarkable professions. Quite the opposite. I realised I am no longer looking for inspiring stories. I am looking for conversations.

The first portrait was of Maria de Lurdes, a florist who has been selling flowers every day near my office. I have probably walked past her hundreds of times without ever asking her name. One afternoon I finally stopped. We talked for a while. I went home and painted her.

It suddenly became obvious to me that I wasn’t painting a florist.

I was painting the conversation.

For years I thought I was searching for subjects. Then I thought I was searching for better paintings. At one point I even convinced myself that painting people with greater visibility would somehow help me become a better artist because more people would see my work. Looking back, I know that wasn’t true. Visibility can open doors, but it cannot tell you what is worth painting.

This project feels different because, for the first time, I don’t know who I will paint tomorrow. I don’t leave home looking for someone famous or someone extraordinary. I leave hoping that someone says yes to a conversation.

Perhaps that is what I have been searching for all these years without realising it.

And perhaps that is also why I have felt so disconnected from everything else.

Until now I always separated my life very clearly. During office hours I worked. Painting only existed afterwards. It was almost a rule I had with myself. Lately that has changed. I catch myself thinking about painting while I should be thinking about work. Not because I care less about my job. Quite the opposite. I know how important it is. It gives me stability. It allows me to live like an adult, to help build a future with Tarla and to paint without worrying whether the next painting has to pay the electricity bill.

That is exactly why I feel guilty.

Because I notice I am no longer fully present.

One unfinished task becomes another, then another. Emails accumulate. I know I am capable of doing better and that feeling slowly becomes heavier than the work itself.

Yesterday Portugal was eliminated from the World Cup.

I thought I was only sad because of football.

Maybe I wasn’t.

Maybe I was sad because it felt like saying goodbye to someone who has influenced the way I work for almost my entire life. Cristiano Ronaldo taught me many things without ever speaking directly to me. I still remember him saying that the most important goal is always the next one. Or that luck requires a tremendous amount of work.

I think what always fascinated me wasn’t the football.

It was the obsession.

The idea that someone could dedicate an entire life to becoming better at the one thing they loved most.

Perhaps that is why I recognise something uncomfortable in myself.

When you spend more than ten years doing the same thing, without really knowing where it will lead, when you continue after work, at night, on weekends, even when you are exhausted, maybe obsession is no longer the wrong word.

The part that scares me isn’t painting every Saturday.

It is that last week Tarla reminded me that next Saturday marks eleven years since we began our relationship, and before I smiled, before I thought about what we could do together, my first thought was that I wouldn’t be able to paint.

The thought disappeared immediately.

What remained was guilt.

Not because I don’t want to spend that day with her. Because I do. Family has always been the most important thing in my life. Without family nothing else really matters. What frightened me was simply noticing which thought arrived first. Perhaps passion quietly changes us before we notice it.

The strange thing is that, from the outside, it probably looks like I am living exactly the life I always wanted. The paintings are finally reaching people. Millions have seen my work over the last few weeks. Messages continue arriving. New opportunities appear almost every day.

But when I get home, those numbers don’t make the decisions for me.

I still have to decide whether tonight I paint, whether I rest, whether I call a friend I haven’t seen in months, whether I spend time with Tarla, whether I simply sit outside without doing anything at all.

The days are still twenty-four hours long.

Nothing changed except the feeling inside me.

Sometimes people ask why I don’t simply paint commissioned portraits. The answer seems obvious. I could probably make good money doing it. Enough people have asked over the last few months.

But every time I imagine it, something feels wrong.

I know I could paint ten portraits.

Then twenty.

Then fifty.

But would the bank lend me money because I had three good months?

Would I stop worrying about supporting a future family?

Would I really be freer?

Or would I simply exchange one obligation for another?

I don’t know.

If someone offered me tomorrow exactly the same financial stability I have today but allowed me to paint every single day, I would accept immediately.

That has never been the doubt. The doubt has always been everything around painting.Perhaps that is why I feel lost. Not because I don’t know what I want anymore. For the first time, I think I know exactly what I want. I just don’t know how much of my life I am willing to give it. If one day I have children, I hope they remember only one thing about me.

That their father never gave up. Not because painting always came first. But because he spent his whole life trying to find a way of loving what he painted without forgetting to love the people who were there long before the paintings existed.