Artwork breakdown: https://beta.cent.co/+6dqndp ||| Initially I wanted to aim towards a depiction of the Tree of Life from a gnostic point of view, to produce a surreal drawing. There are different interpretations which you can read about on the internet about what the Tree of Life means, however I thought about.. what does it mean for ME? An old man, takes a scissor and some papers, carves and cuts his memories, blending them into the branches of his very own tree of life.Here we can see a memory of his earliest memories and first family. Him as a toddler and his father playing with him, rising him high to "fly". When life was simple and his happiness was always with him and not where society later told him it can be found. In the left we can see him running as a child, always up to explore and be adventurous. On the right side, he goes through his adolescence, and a symbolical and stereotypical hump on his back appears. Every person must remember his own failures. But not to be tormented by them, but to learn and grow, to see the teaching in the failure is a success. in itself. Here we can see him with his hand over his forehead, in a point of his life where worry doubt and uncertainty were setting it.The first time he discovered love. It felt like nothing else mattered in the world, only him, her and their love. Time froze. Some memories are sweet.. while some are bitter. Here we see knives stuck in his back, symbolically suggesting betrayal. Could be a feeling and memory or a collection of both, of feeling betrayed not only by someone close, but perhaps even by himself.
When we dream of something and we wish to obtain it we place happiness in that 'thing', and we give a piece of our current happiness into that 'thing' we wish to obtain. When we are a child, we are nothing but a beam or sunshine happiness, radiating joy, we don't need to be happy because we already are happy.
And as time goes, and we want this and that, we are being told about 'needing' this and that... we give away bits by bits of our happiness reservoir, to things and other people.
And sometimes, other people can disappoint us.. sometimes they can betray us. Sometimes, we become lazy or procrastinate and we do not get close to fulfill our dream. And so, we lose our happiness which we ourselves gave away. But we must remember, actually we never really gave away anything. The happiness is always within you, but you must seek it and rejoice, and give up the resistance of the belief that you need x and y in order to be happy. And here a sweet memory appears, he marries the love of his life. 2 now becomes 1.And the cycle of life continues. Now, HE becomes the father, and lifts his newborn baby in the sky, just as his father did with him.Here we can see a tear drop, as the old man was remembering his whole life. Size: 4574 x 5692
