I Am a Work of Art
Share
I certainly don’t mean on the outside, but on the inside. And we all are.
I think about the hidden elements of ourselves that rarely surface. The fragments that never make it into words. The things stored away like canvases in an attic, waiting for light. Our inner worlds are layered, unfinished, ambiguous. Full of gestures that may seem accidental, yet carry us forward in ways we can never fully explain.
Ambiguity and Perception
We are ambiguous by nature. Parts of us speak clearly to some people and remain invisible to others. The whole story is never spoken.
Contrary to popular belief, I have never thought that explanations deepen love. We are often told that stories make us care — and perhaps they do — but when it comes to art, I am not so sure. Knowing how something was made does not always make us feel it more deeply.
What captivates us is not the technical breakdown or the step-by-step process. It is the mystery of the finished work. The magic of something we cannot quite explain.
The less we know, the more we are drawn in. It is the same with people. We love to idealise, to wonder, to project our own meaning onto what we don’t fully understand. It’s why nature has always held such an enormous pull. It humbles us. It makes us feel small. It reminds us that mystery itself can be beautiful.
This, I think, is another parallel between people and art. We are drawn to both for what we can’t quite grasp. We adore not only what we understand, but what remains unknown.
The Question of Authorship
This obsession with ambiguity isn’t new. At seventeen, I already felt its pull. That age remains the age of my soul, because so many of the themes that shape me today were conceived then: half-seeded, unformed, but already alive.
At twenty-two, I wrote my dissertation on Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net. By then I had already weathered my first great failure. In my late teens I had tried and stumbled, started and stopped, hidden and restarted. I had learned how easily truth melts into narrative, how shame reshapes itself into a story you tell others and yourself. By twenty-two, I had already felt the chaos of false starts, the humiliation of not knowing where I belonged, and the quiet, stubborn act of pulling myself back together.
That is part of why Under the Net spoke to me so deeply. Murdoch writes about the “language machine,” about how everything we say is shaped for effect. Only the simplest phrases, like “pass the gravy,” escape the net. The rest of it, whether confession, explanation, or story, is already crafted.
That idea has haunted me ever since. It reminds me that authorial intent matters, but never wholly. Once a work leaves its maker, meaning drifts beyond their control. Art is always ambiguous. It will always be changed by whoever encounters it.
And life is the same.
Detours and Returns
Looking back, even my detours speak to this theme. After university I spent seven years as a programmer. At the time it felt like avoiding the responsibility of creativity altogether. Yet programming was also creative in its own way. Another detour, another unfinished canvas, another gesture that seemed unrelated but was, in truth, part of the same painting.
Now, I see those years as part of the whole. Not a diversion, but another layer that adds depth.
Embracing the Unfinished
So here I am: unfinished, layered, ambiguous. Not fully knowable. Not fully in control.
And perhaps that is the point. Art, to me, is a reflective state, because we are art too. We are organic. Art is organic in a way little else is. It grows, it shifts, it outlives us.
I don’t always think of myself as an artist. I simply know that the craft of painting matters to me. It doesn’t have to matter to anyone else in the same way. You don’t have to love it as I do. But if a painting speaks to you, it will grow with you. It will take on a life of its own.
When I paint, I am realising my own potential. Each work is an offshoot of everything I have lived, but once it leaves me it becomes something else entirely. Perhaps it will outlive me and speak differently again to someone else. Perhaps it won’t. I cannot know.
All I know is the impulse has always been there. It cannot be stopped. There are more paintings in me than I will ever finish. This fact tortures me, and often moves me to tears. I feel the weight of lost time, yet also the pull of possibility. I have so much more to give, so much more to discover. I have only just begun.
