Soon after I was working on pieces for my exhibition in Toronto, in a shared studio which I only attended at night, escaping the lonely hours of my Airbnb and the crowd in the morning, I did three pieces, one of them was the night my grandfather passed away. As I was painting the sparkles of water over the remaining flowers, I cried over the way the paint was flowing. It happens from time to time, I find myself tearing up upon a work that isn’t necessarily sad or dramatic. I woke up in the morning around 10, my mom called and she was wearing black, she didn’t say anything, I just saw her clothes and I knew, I cried for the hours he was gone without me knowing so, and for the distance I couldn’t fill, for his brilliant presence which lighted everyone around him, and for knowing him, who bought flowers for his daughter just because he knew they were her favourite. I was sending a voice note to a friend as I was leaving the house, but the wind kept interrupting me, I said something about sharing blood with someone and then I went to an ice cream shop and got a double chocolate sth as tears were drying on my cheek. Loss is weird, loss is unknown as much as we talk about it and write about it, still, when there isn’t a chance of seeing someone ever again it’s the most unreal situation one ever goes through.
I painted later that week, I poured white over a blue and purple still life, my exhibition was in 2 weeks. I found a house, moved, went back to Iran, came back, and I brought a tie from my grandfather with red butterflies over black, and as time pushed me, I found butterflies were flying in my pieces. Yesterday, 29th December, it was raining and I was walking down to my studio, it's the holidays, depressing and wet, I scratched branches and wings on an ultramarine blue and dioxin purple background. It was almost the same palette as my first painting. Painting saved me. After everything, after all the effort it takes to fit in this Legoland, to stay kind despite all the heartbreaks, to keep my sanity day to day, it’s the moments I find myself bursting in front of an image I couldn’t imagine before, painting makes me a child as much as it makes me a god. I wouldn’t have survived without it.