I must begin my article with a quote that will make more sense after you put it in the context of my art.
“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice ... it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.”
―Earl Nightingale,The Strangest Secret
I had no clear direction when I started to do this bodypainting. It is quite funny that I decided to title it “Choose your direction”, right? Well, for me bodypainting is a form of mindfulness and relaxation. I never start with the final result in mind. For me when I decide to do art on my body is similar with the moment when a child decides to play: the process flows naturally, organic. I said that I had no clear direction. But maybe that is not entirely true. I had one: my inner calling to pursue something that I love doing without having the logical steps to guide me through it. Let this idea sit with you for a while before continuing to read: when you feel an inner direction pulling you toward a bigger purpose without having the logical and technical plan….would you still believe in that direction?
Painting on my body is play and I enjoy the lack of rules and limitations. I just use my imagination and allow myself to create whatever I want on my body. Hours pass by and I lose the notion of time. Bodypainting is like a form of therapy which costs me nothing while making me earn so much: quality time with my inner child. If it would not require so many hours to create and then to not have to wash it away I would do it more often. Whenever I feel inspiration I am more than happy to dedicate a full day to my inner Picasso.
I thought of life and how we often put our own limitations as shackles because of the outside world. It is easier now to conform because people are addicted to screens more than ever and they attend to the curated lives of others and treat it as normality. Curated life is not life, it is a very small artificial part of what makes us human. Choosing a direction in life is not easy and it doesn’t happen only once. We can change careers multiple times. We can change ourselves daily while maintaining core principles important. We can go left and right until we figure it out. We should never accept the limitations that others place on us: marry by a certain age, have x amount of babies, earn this much money. No, we should dare to dream our own direction and shoot for the starts. People project on us their own shackles. Don’t you dare picking them up, it is not your duty to fulfill someone’s expectations of you, especially if that makes you a lower version of yourself. Often we dim our light in order to fit with small minded people. We play it low. We stay under the radar . And this is how we waste the biggest gift that we received: life.
I believe in what we call inner calling. That voice deep inside of you that whispers. It gets louder and louder when you go sideways. No matter how much you try to cover it it doesn’t work. On their deathbed a lot of people regret what they didn’t do. But guess what? Risking to go left and right multiple times will make you do a lot of mistakes.
You will fail. You will lose people and friends. Some relationships will go down and never be the same. You will face ridicul, rejection or solitude. But think of these moments as a stormy season in the sea of life: this too shall pass. And your inner compass, your heart, your intuition, your divine self, will always show you the direction. Will you dare to listen?
