Why Do You Paint? What Inspires You?

I don't have a romantic answer. I don't know why I paint. I don't believe there's some grand calling. Life simply carries you along. You carry within you a small seed of talent or curiosity, but whether it finds fertile ground in which to grow is something no one can know.

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, my art teachers asked whether I had ever considered pursuing art. Apparently, they saw something in me that I had not yet recognized in myself. Until then, I had never thought of myself as talented. I simply liked the idea of making art. To this day, I am deeply grateful to them. I will never forget them for as long as I live. I was accepted into the High School of Fine Arts and, without realizing it, I took the first step toward the life I live today.

At school, we were shown albums filled with reproductions of the Old Masters. I would stare at them, unable to understand how a painting could possess such depth, such life, such extraordinary craftsmanship. I only knew one thing: that one day I wanted to be able to paint like that.

After graduating from university, I couldn't make a living as a painter. I started working in graphic design. A few years later, I moved into illustration and freelance work. It was the way I found to support myself. Naturally, it involved years of struggle and learning, but it was the closest I could come to painting for a living.

That was when the real discipline began. Every project demanded a different style. Learning to adapt to different visual languages, mastering one approach after another—that became my baptism by fire. It wasn't easy, and today I'm grateful for it.

People often say that every artist has a distinctive style. I disagree. I think most artists have simply never pushed themselves beyond their comfort zone—or, as people like to say these days, "stepped outside their comfort zone." If I have to work in a style I've never explored before, I'm not afraid. I know I can immerse myself in it and, after a few attempts, make it my own.

Looking back, my entire journey has been one of constant learning, acquiring new skills, and searching for the next opportunity that would bring me a little closer to myself. Yet from the very beginning, I knew that illustration and commercial art didn't feel like where I belonged. They were a compromise. I did what I had to do in order to survive and remain independent. What I missed was the freedom to paint without specifications, without deadlines, without seeing everything through a client's eyes.

Years later, I returned to watercolor. Casually, without expectations, almost like a mirage from my youth—a distant memory of freedom that simply refused to disappear. I painted still lifes and landscapes, simply to rediscover the feeling of holding a brush loaded with real paint after spending years working almost exclusively in digital media.

Throughout all those years, I never stopped observing people. I read psychology. I tried to understand what lay behind their words and decisions. Those observations had always lived within me, but only as a vague, intuitive understanding. It wasn't until I began transforming them into paintings that I realised this was what I had been searching for all along.

And then I realised something else.

Art is a strange thing. The things I rarely say out loud in everyday life suddenly appear on a canvas in front of complete strangers. It is a peculiar kind of vulnerability. You don't present your most polished or socially acceptable self. You present your truest self. Unprotected. In front of people who will understand. In front of people who won't. And there I am, exposed in my most intimate form. Completely vulnerable. It takes real courage to reveal yourself and accept whatever reactions may follow.

When I paint the subjects that truly matter to me, time and space cease to exist. There is only the canvas and me. I enter a trance-like state. I don't like being interrupted. I lose all sense of whether I've eaten or whether it's day or night. Sometimes I don't even realise how exhausted I am until I stop. I feel completely absorbed, at peace, and whole.

I don't know why I paint.

But I know how I feel when I do.

And perhaps that is the only answer that truly matters.