In this digital painting series I try to capture something that has paramount importance to our everyday life. We tend to overlook how valuable and precious particular Moments are. We are busy, we are focusing on our career, we are enjoying life to the fullest, and immersing ourselves in instant gratification just to realize at the end that the money that we scraped together and the toys we gathered don't matter at all. We don't carry them over. At some point of this journey you will get rid of all that. If you think ' the man who has the most toys wins ' - you're just in the wrong game.
What I want to show here is more closer to what Sam Harris said on one of his podcasts about attention: 'Think of the laughing face of your child when you have your smartphone competing for your attention, but your child is there and you've got this one opportunity to pay attention. We're constantly faced with this triaging of attention in our lives and it is the one thing we never get back. How we use each moment of attention, is how we used it, and we don't know how many more we have left and so it's an increasingly precious skill to be able to prioritize how we use our attention.'
I believe this is a pressing problem of our time, for numerous reasons. I ain't no preaching here, just offering my way of dealing with this. Appreciation is key. I write almost everyday a couple of things down, things that I can truly appreciate, small things that I can be grateful for. (even small things that I have almost infinite amount of free clear drinking water at my fingertips - we tend to overlook these , and take them for granted) It helps me ground my ego, and see things in a form where they reveal their true value. I believe if you keep these in check, you get to know yourself, you get to know your Self. I'd like to share these paintings with y'all. The first depicts one of my favourite moments where, me and my friends walked on the shore of northern Denmark. The 3 days that we got spend there were magical and when we were looking at the few pictures we took during the journey, we got this one, and simultaneously everyone thought 'things that matter' .
Friends, Denmark 2019
The second painting is about my family. My mom and dad. The reference I used was a photo I took secretly on one of our recent trip. They were very cute sitting next to each other on a bench, just looking ahead and contemplating. I don't know what they were talking about, if at all. I was just observing from the distance. What I saw was the two person who shaped my world. Ups and downs, good times and hard, I'm always and forever grateful for them.
Mom and dad, Hungary 2018
I'm planning to add more pieces to this series, but this is exactly that kind of thing that you don't force, you can't, it sorta just manifest itself ( those Moments), all I can do is try to be aware.