Some things become paintings.
Some stay as conversations with myself.
This is one of those conversations.
I've only been painting for about a year and a half. Not very long.
When I started, I wasn't thinking about collections or building a body of work. I just painted whatever felt interesting that day. Every canvas stood on its own.
Then, without even realising it, I kept coming back to the same faces. Dark faces. Scarred faces. Faces wearing sunglasses. Again. And again. The funny thing is... I didn't even notice I was doing it.
Until someone else did.
A few months ago, a friend I hadn't spoken to in years sent me a message and called me out of nowhere. Not weeks. Not months. Years.
I was genuinely surprised. I hadn't heard from him in what felt like forever. I guess that's one of the strange things about life. You can go years without speaking to someone and still feel connected to them.
He was always the writer at school. The poet. The person who could make words feel effortless. After university our lives took different directions. He followed music & events. II found my way into painting.
Then one night, something happened that changed all of us.
We lost a mutual friend.
I had actually met him through my friend. They were studying music together at the time, and before long, we became one of those groups that always found each other after the day came to an end. We'd talk nonsense for hours, laugh until our stomachs hurt, They'd even try teaching me how to make music, which, to me, felt like trying to learn science. I was terrible lol .We'd meet new people... and stayed out later than we planned. No matter where we were, it somehow always felt like home.
Our mutual friend was the one person who never drank. The responsible one. The one with the most contagious laugh. The one who somehow managed to be happy all the time. The smart one, the one who would give you advice. He was the person who picked you up when you were down, and the one who made sure everyone got home safely after a night out. He looked after everyone without ever making it feel like a responsibility.
The strange part is that only hours earlier, we'd all been together. Just another ordinary night. Talking. Laughing. Making plans. Then everyone went home.
The next morning, the phone rang.
It's the kind of call nobody ever wants to receive. The kind where your first thought is,
"No... we were literally just together."
It was the first time I'd ever lost a friend. Until then, death was something that happened to other people. Not to people my age. Not to someone I'd been laughing with only hours before.
I don't think any of us ever really recovered from that night. Not because we stopped caring about each other. But because grief has a strange way of scattering people.
We never spoke about that night again.
Ever.
We still haven't.
And I honestly don't think we ever will.
Life kept moving.
So did we.
Somewhere along the way we all drifted into different versions of ourselves.
Years passed.
Then one day, my friend reached out.
We ended up talking for hours. Which, honestly, felt completely normal.
That had always been us.
He's a yapper too.
Just the calmer version of me.
The kind of person who makes you think after you've left the conversation.
At one point he asked me something so simple that it completely stopped me.
"Why do you paint these STITCHED faces?"
I paused.
Because I didn't actually have an answer.
Not immediately.
I realised I'd been painting these faces over and over again without ever stopping to ask myself why.
So I gave him an answer.
Looking back, I'm not even sure I believed it.
But after we hung up, I couldn't stop thinking about his question.
The truth is...
I'm still figuring it out.
What I do know is that I feel happiest when I'm painting them.
They feel familiar.
Almost like dolls.
Every stitch.
Every mark.
Every layer feels like I'm giving something another chance.
Something worn out.
Something forgotten.
Something lost...
but found.
Maybe that's the answer.
Or maybe I'm still looking for it.
Because that question wasn't really about finding an answer. It was about finally noticing what had been quietly happening in front of me all along.
After that, I started paying attention to more than just the faces.
I started paying attention to everything.
A torn cardboard box.
A loose thread.
Tape that refuses to peel away cleanly.
A crack in concrete.
Paint that drips where it wasn't supposed to.
The marks left behind by someone else's hands.
Things I'd spent most of my life walking past.
I stopped asking,
"Is this beautiful?"
and started asking,
"Why did I ignore it in the first place?"
That question slowly became this collection.
Some pieces became paintings.
Some became masks.
Some became sculptures.
Different materials.
The same curiosity.
Every piece in Before Anybody Called It Beautiful started with something that had already lived another life.
Maybe that's what I've really been making this whole time.
Not paintings.
Not masks.
Not sculptures.
A different way of paying attention.
I don't think everything has to be understood immediately.
Some things need time.
Some paintings.
Some conversations.
Some friendships.
Some observations.
I'm still figuring out why I love painting those faces. And somehow, I'm okay with that.
I know I'll go back to them.
Just not yet.
For now...
I'm still paying attention.
Maybe that's true of this collection too.
So if there's one thing I hope you take away from spending time here, it isn't a favourite artwork.
I hope that the next time you walk past a torn box, a loose thread, peeling paint, a crack in the pavement or something that looks completely ordinary... you stop for just a second longer.
Because maybe nothing was ever really lost.
Maybe it was just waiting for someone to notice it.
—
Until next time,
Esona