Courage
acrylics on canvas
89 x 116 cm
2021
sold // 650 € (incl. VAT 10% for European customers)
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what can I offer you?
just this heart beating wildly
just this longing
swirling under my skin
and this promise
hidden in the palms of my hands -
that I will offer you
myself
fully and without
holding anything back
I’ll offer you this never ending thirst
this need to get closer, always closer
this longing echoing inside of me
that finally, finally
a touch would come and rest on my skin
sink under my skin
right into the
turmoil of my heart.
// kaisa vanhala
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This painting was born in early 2021 when I wanted to test myself a bit and do something different - to reach outside of the comfort zone.
The name Courage doesn’t come from that, though. This painting has a poem that speaks of how stepping close to someone asks for courage, in many ways. It seems that all through this corona year my mind has been pondering about relationships (even more than usually, that is). I’ve thought endlessly about how to stay close to others when you’re forced apart, and it feels to me like a metaphor of our life in general. To love is to be courageous. Love is not an easy fairytale, but an adventure full of surprises and obstacles and danger and fear and hardship. So many things try to force us apart, away from each other. Love is the free-willing choice to battle all of that. To enter into love is courage - and asks for courage. To let anyone actually close to you is courage. To go close to an another person is courage.
When painting this piece, I felt adventurous myself in the way that I wanted to try what’d happen if the poem of the painting was an actual PART of the painting. So an excerpt from the poem is actually written in paint here.
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The colours of the photo are carefully adjusted as close to real life as possible. The pink shades are a bit softer and warmer in nature; photos always tend to change them a bit.