Ousia/Energia

In 2021, I had just moved to Berlin and was renting my first studio. I stretched a one-meter square canvas and got to work. At first, it was business as usual—I found myself making a painting similar to what I’d made before, which was frustrating.

Then, one day about four months in, the painting transcended. I have no idea how or why it happened.

Since then, it has hung opposite my bed. Sometimes its energy wakes me in the night. It is a force. A frequency. I can no longer see its formal qualities (i.e., bluish, square, tonal, abstract, etc.). Its essence is actuality. It often appears to me as a unified entity. Sometimes it hangs silently on my wall; other times, it wakes me and tells me things.

I say this not as a testament to my own abilities—on the contrary, I believe its beauty comes from the fact that it came from somewhere beyond. It willed itself into existence. I was blind when I made it, fuzzy, as if in a kind of fugue state. Now I use it as a guide. It continues to teach me, even years later.