What has made an impact on your life and character?
When I was a late teenager. Going through high school with 100 miles per hour I actually had a hard time really understanding the greater meanings of different topics in history or some of the other subjects at school. I went from a straight A student to barely managing all the shit happening around me.
Why?
Because my home and foundation were crumbling around me. Deteriorating and changing into something grim, foul and chaotic. I didn’t know then. But I began to be lost.
I dropped out of high school, got an apartment and had no idea what to do. Free? But clueless.
It took sometime before I got back on my feet to finish off high school. But when I did it was with a critical attitude and the need for answers.
One subject in particular that I felt like I “woke up” to, was a session in our Danish class, where we were going the the ages of different periods of philosophy changed our way of thinking.
They ideas of Nihilism and existentialism ended up having the answers to my own personal perspectives and emotional struggles.
Nihilism; the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.
Existentialism; a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
Now see, this post is already a long post, and were I to go further into these philosophical topics and or elaborate on my own personal struggles- I don’t think so. But I have had the need for a long time to address this emotional turning point in my life. Because I strive to visualise that liberating development, spiritually and emotionally throughout my paintings.
My hope is that it will resonate with you guys or at least turn your head nodding to remember the old high school books where read about Søren Kiekegaard and Nietshe.
Through being an honest and true individual we might just feel apart of a bigger community.
