Painting for recovering

I feel good painting, I feel as if I am doing something good with my time, like I am really taking profit from it instead of wasting it. I haven't been working for 5 months now, trying to recover myself from four different surgeries. It has been hard. Not that I love my job, but I am the kind of person that wants to feel useful. And I was not feeling like that during my first three months after the big first surgery.

The thing is that I am experiencing something I have already lived about five years ago. Then, I also had a big surgery that completely changed my life. It was even harder than now, as it didn't go as expected. It took me more than two years to go back to work again.

Let me tell you something. Sometimes is not about physical health. Now, more than ever, we hear about mental health. When you have a physical disease, a physical problem, it also happens to get mental. So, maybe, you kind of recover physically. But the mental recovery takes more time.

About the Women on Chairs: a collection about recovering

This collection of painting was a coincidence, as I made the two first paintings not thinking in anything to willingly connect them. In the middle of the process of painting the second piece, however, I noticed something in common. There were chairs, and both women were kind of taking care of themselves in their pose. That make me think it would be interesting to make a serie of paintings to reflect women pausing their daily activities to think about what they would want or need.

I wanted them to be dreamy, and also I wanted the whole piece to be beautiful and to reflect calm and tranquility.

The first three pieces

As I say, I want this collection to be about self-discovery, about paying attention to one-self and to find out what to do next. I want to paint women who are taking a moment to think about themselves and solve and cure themselves by hearing their own thoughts, needs, dreams and believes.

Golden Dreams

This is the first piece of the collection. In this piece, the woman has found time for herself and she is dreaming about what she wants to achieve and getting decided to do it. She is facing her future, and also her past, and as the colors reflect, she has sadness but hope and believe.

Nude Calm

This woman is inspiren in a self-portrait of a Spanish photographer, Clara Ruiz (@byclararuiz), that I have always admired. This picture was inspirational for me, as the woman's pose reflects self-care and a lot of tenderness, and also finding a spot within herself to find peace and forgiveness. She feels at home in her own body. Nude colors represent calm and the birds are a symbol of freedom and tranquility, and also the waves and the beach in the background.

Misty Night

This is a mixed media piece, made mainly with inks, acrylics, oils, and some gold leaf. This is another artwork in the Woman on Chairs, and I have used a self-portrait photograph I made about two years ago. It is the first self-portrait I am painting. It has been a huge process for me, as I have had to face my own image. I have felt so good painting that, as I had forgotten my own beauty and I have been feeling closer to it during this process.