The Delivery Day

I have been working on my longest and most ambitious project for almost six months. More than one hundred hours of painting, done mostly in silence. I actually finished the paintings almost a month ago, but it became surprisingly difficult to find the right day to finally deliver them. Meetings cancelled four times, always a few hours before. Busy schedules, important people, other priorities. I understood it, but at the same time I carried this strange anxiety of having the works trapped between completion and beginning.

Yesterday, finally, I delivered the ten paintings.

It is a strange feeling to remove paintings one by one from a case and place them in front of people after months of work. Each painting carries hours of thought, corrections, hesitation, brushstrokes, moments of inspiration that I can barely remember anymore. Yet, when presenting them quickly one after another, it almost feels too easy. As if the speed of the moment removes weight from the work itself. I remember feeling relief more than anything else.

Relief because I had been carrying this responsibility quietly for months and because, in a way, the paintings no longer belonged entirely to me.

The reaction was better than I expected. That kind of silence followed by difficulty choosing a favourite painting. A reaction of awe, perhaps. But I also realized that I do not fully know how to read reactions anymore. Maybe true appreciation only reveals itself later, through care, through effort, through what happens next.

And that is where fear begins.

For the first time in my artistic path, the future of a project no longer depends entirely on me. Until now, painting has always been something deeply individual. A one man show. If a painting succeeds or fails, it depends entirely on my hands, my decisions, my effort. I know how to work until exhaustion. I know how to insist until I can no longer do more. But this project now enters a phase where I must trust others. Not because I distrust them. On the contrary, they are far more capable than I am in what comes next. Communication, positioning, finding the right opportunities, creating visibility. I would not know how to do those things properly. What frightens me is that something I placed so much care into now depends on forces outside of myself.

I fear the project disappearing before it reaches the people it was meant to reach.

I know most people will not spend more than a few seconds looking at each painting. They will never notice every brushstroke, every correction, every detail. And perhaps that is normal. Perhaps paintings are not meant to be consumed through the amount of labour behind them. I also know this project will not touch everyone. I only hope it touches the right people.

Curiously, after finishing the project, I thought I would stop painting for a while. I imagined myself finally resting, watching films at night, doing absolutely nothing without guilt. I thought exhaustion would force me into stillness.

Kylie Jenner in Schiaparelli, artwork

But the opposite happened. I continued painting every day. As if momentum itself had become a habit that I am afraid to interrupt. I finished another large painting already, one that deserves its own letter because there is a story behind it, and now I have started another. A 1.5 meter portrait inspired by this year’s Met Gala theme, Fashion is Art. A painting of Kylie Jenner wearing Schiaparelli couture. Nobody asked me to paint it. Nobody expects it. And maybe that is exactly why I needed to do it. There is something in the image that keeps pulling me back to the canvas. The monochromatic browns and beiges, the stillness in her eyes, the presence of the dress itself. Eleven thousand hours of embroidery, thousands of pearls and painted scales transformed into something almost sculptural. The image does not feel like a portrait to me. It feels like a statement. Perhaps that is what interests me. Not simply painting a person, but painting presence. I do not know if this painting will become part of a collection or remain a single isolated work. I do not even know if anything will happen with it. But lately I have stopped asking myself for explanations before painting. Sometimes painting becomes something closer to obsession than discipline. A search for peace through repetition. And perhaps what surprised me most after finishing the project was realizing how much I missed sharing my work. During these months, I was unable to communicate anything publicly. No new paintings, no process, no momentum.

Now that I can paint freely again, I feel the need to share.

Not only because I want visibility or to build my name, but because sharing feels like the natural final stage of painting. A painting hidden forever almost feels unfinished. Even if only a few people see it, the act of sharing completes the process somehow. My body keeps asking for a pause. And yet I continue. I sleep well, but I still feel tired. Not physically alone, but mentally unable to stop long enough to think about the future properly. Painting has become a kind of escape from those thoughts. Perhaps that is why I keep moving from one canvas directly into the next. Because while painting, there is no need to decide anything about life. Only the next brushstroke exists. And still, underneath all of this movement, there is one fear that remains quietly present. That the project disappears before it has the chance to live.