Where am I From?

"Where am I from? I'm from my childhood.
I'm from my childhood like I'm from a country!" - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Where am I from?" is a series of generally monochromatic acrylic paintings about childhood. Children surrender the reasoning and concreteness of the world for the sake of amusement, fun, and the thrill of the play. Childhood is an unquestioning dream-like perception of the real world dullness; it is a state of altered consciousness that leads out of long, thick sleep into cold reality; it is the prelude to the symphony of life. Some of the best creative insights and moments of pure spontaneous joy find their way to us from childhood like the light of a star, far away and long gone. But this past season of our life is not lost. The underground of daily existence buries our childhood deep, like dark roots, phreatic water, and the fleeting fragrance of yesterwinters’ snows. I only dream that our steady march towards the “undiscovered country” is just closing the loop back into eternal childhood. This work is dedicated to Mitus, who left us nine years ago, and to Dan, who is gone just for two days now. May their souls rejoice the land of eternal childhood. 08/01/2018