Accidents and incomplete art

I was eating olives, drinking wine and pondering upon my creations. 5 minutes later, as my fingers scanned the empty bowl I figured two things. Firstly, I ate about 50 olives without noticing and secondly, maybe Maria is right. She's a friend of mine that has been helping me with my filming project. She's the protagonist, but that's irrelevant. Anyhow, when she came into my room for the first time, she saw the pictures I've blue-tagged on my closet and she remarked at them. She liked them so much that she asked me if I could give her one to frame it on her wall. These pictures are paintings of my old school studies. They were "projects". Exercises. One thing they have in common is that apart from two of them, they are incomplete. Another thing they have in common is that they are not well preserved and there's a story behind their condition. I cared so much about them that when I was cleaning up my room, I took the cardboard file in which I used to store them outside the house to make some space and I forgot it there. Then it rained and rained. At some point in my life I went to the backyard again to... seize the day, idk, and there it was. The pulp of what used to be my portfolio.

I opened it up and got down to business. As the straight cold killer I am, completely unattached by my previous struggles like it was from another life, I threw away everything except 5 paintings that were still okay. They got damaged but in a weird way that made them look cooler from my perspective. It reminded me of the accidental discovery of penicillin. Perhaps art and science do manifest by accidents. On 2 of the paintings that were a mix of pantone markers and pencil, the ink has bleeded on the folds of the creased paper making an interesting effect. My room had no paintings or posters and looked kind of stripped of any artistic touch so I decided to decorate my wall-closet with the surviving pictures. It was kind of a random themed decoration if you take into account that one of them was a realistic painting of a Renault 306 (exercises, remember?) but what the hell? I painted them, I might as well use them for something - anything and "C'est ne pas un renault."

Anyways, back to Maria. I felt so pleased that she liked them that of course I agreed to give her whichever she liked. To have one of my works framed? Framed? In a living room? It has never even crossed my mind. She had a problem choosing which one she liked (Except from the car. I've taken this down because it was heavy and always falling in the middle of the night) best and told me if only she could take everything. Double the shock for me. "Just take them! Oh, my god, stop it. You are making me blush!"

Anyways, parabim-paraboom-parabam, she chose the one with the portrait of a little chinese girl that's smelling a flower, with a nest on her head and colibri flying close, above her. At this point it suddenly dawned on me. Everybody that has ever entered my room, remarked at these 5 paintings. Even the Renault. That's why I've kept even that one there for so long. People would get puzzled, asking me why I had the picture of this puny car on my closet and I'd say "Aha! Not a picture, but a painting." They'd say "No shit!" I'd say, "Well, shit." Thing is that before this catastrofe, I never really showed my work anywhere. I didn't care to. They were boring exercises. That's why they were left undone to begin with. I never believed that they were of any value to anyone. The only ones that saw them, where school related individuals that were mostly stuck on technique and cynically (me included) criticised them. An arts student should understand what I mean: "You could have done this better using this and that." "There's a mistake here, here and here." "The colibri could have been placed a centimeter lower", etc, etc. Way to kill creativity, right?

After pondering upon my old struggles I felt so ridiculous. These paintings felt ridiculous. I told Maria, "You know what? These are incomplete. If you'd like I will paint another one, a completed one, just for you" and then she replied something groundbreaking for me, might I add the best compliment anyone has ever made upon something I have created.

"That's part of their appeal. Like they're still on the making but done. Perhaps that's your style."

Damn right that's my style. I just never thought of it as a style or as appealing.

There's not a straightforward meaning to any of this. It's just an instant that made me happy and I wanted to write about it.