My Burnout Art
Painting helped me better understand my journey of overcoming stress-related mental illness.
I didn’t want the fact that I haven’t painted since I was in kindergarten to stop me from getting my emotions out in a visual format, so I bought acrylic colours and a canvas, put on some calm French music and just let the inspiration come to me. And 4 hours later this was the result!
The inspiration behind this piece was that everything in life is in constant change. A constant flow. Emotions flow into each other with blurred lines. A transition from one thing to another, from one emotion to another; some lighter and some heavier. In this case, the black colour symbolizes the darkness in life, a tough period, something to overcome. But we can’t fully reach the light, at least not the pure and sustainable light within (the white in the painting) if we don’t do the hard work of changing unhealthy habits and digging deep.
Living purposefully and authentically requires vulnerability and hard work. The red in the painting symbolizes the “fire” — the hard transition we have to face in order to come out more balanced and bright on the other side of the dark black tunnel. This process of going from darkness to light is not always straightforward and can sometimes be blurry and difficult to navigate through, but once you have gone through it you realize that your “white” wouldn’t be as bright and light if you didn’t throw yourself into the fire and do the hard work yourself. There is no shortcut to self-development. You can’t outsource the task. Change IS hard. Being better for yourself and for your loved ones requires effort, a real fire of massive “redness” in your life, but the process of daring to be vulnerable and brave will reward you tenfold. White symbolizes exactly this reward: the balance and beauty that comes with that inner peace, the calm after the storm. Once you have built those new healthy habits of how you want to live your life and show up in this world, you realize that no matter how much the wind blows outside of you, you will stand stable and calm. You’ve done the hard work. You’ve found peace, your peace.
Usually, in paintings, the lighter colours are higher up symbolizing the sky or similar, and the darker ones are down at the bottom, but I chose to do it the other way around to symbolize that sometimes life throws us in different directions, completely upside down, and we have to navigate from a completely new perspective, a new reality, an unpaved ground. But at the end of the day, no matter what is your “black” in life, if it is up or down, you just have to let go of trying to control the circumstances and just play with the cards you’ve been dealt. When, and only when you realize that real and long-lasting change requires acceptance of “what is”, and courage to throw yourself into the fire with vulnerability and trust, into the beautiful unknown of what is to come when you do, the process of finding your light within will start working for you. It will show you that you are right where you are meant to be at this very moment — and that beautiful painting of yours will start to unfold.
Neale Donald Walsch once said: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” ..and I would like to add to this: “so if you want something you have never had, you’ve got to do something you have never done”!
