Chapter 5
When I paint, I don’t follow a plan. I let the colors pull me in, guiding my hands before my mind has a chance to interfere.
The canvas stretches across the table beneath the magnificent white Mulberry tree, waiting, empty but expectant. It’s a hot summer day in Corfu, Greece, and the world outside hums—cicadas, the whisper of wind through the trees, the smell of the ocean nearby—but none of it matters. Not here. Not now. I press my palms to the surface, closing my eyes just long enough to let instinct take over.
Then motion.
I reach for the paint, thick, rich, almost alive, and pour. It surges across the canvas, rushing and pooling like it has a will of its own. My hands dive in, fingers swirling, dragging streams of crimson through the spreading blues. The colors collide, blend, and flow easily into empty spaces. Cobalt crashes into amber, igniting veins of unexpected green. I stop for a moment, staring in awe at a color I would never, not in my wildest imagination, be able to create, let alone reproduce. White streaks carve pathways through chaos.
I don’t stop it. I watch, I trust, I let it all happen.
My fingers slash through a river of violet, sending splatters arcing through the air. They land unpredictably, perfect. My palm presses down, smearing warmth into shadow, shadow into light. There is no plan, no hesitation. Only movement.
Then I reach for the turquoise ink.
The moment it touches the wet acrylic, it moves differently, spreading like liquid breath, sinking into the grooves of color, bleeding into the deep blues and lightening them from within. The ink slithers through the paint, whispering its own language as it melts into the surface. I tilt the canvas slightly, and the turquoise meanders, creating feathered rivulets, delicate yet electric.
It doesn’t just mix. It transforms.
I exhale sharply. I step back. I watch. I feel. Yes. That’s what it needed.
A voice breaks through.
“How do you know what to do?”
I look up. Veronica, one of my participants, stands at the edge of the canvas, watching me with wide, uncertain eyes. Her own blank canvas is spread beside mine, untouched. A row of paint containers sits in front of her, the lids still on.
I wipe my forearm across my shirt, leaving a smear of deep blue. “What are you waiting for?” I ask in a soft voice.
She hesitates. “I don’t want to mess it up.”
I meet her gaze, steady. “There is no ‘messing up.’ You only need to begin.”
Still, she doesn’t move. I see it in her face, the fear of doing it wrong, the weight of expectation pressing down.
So I don’t explain. I show.
I reach down, plunge my fingers into a pot of molten orange, and smear it across my palm. Then, in one swift motion, I press my hand onto her canvas. The color bursts against the layers beneath, wild, vibrant, alive.
Veronica stares at it.
“That was perfect,” I say. “Not because I planned it. But because it happened.”
Something stirs in her. Slowly, she reaches out, dipping hesitant fingers into a pool of emerald green. Then she stops and looks at me, waiting for confirmation.
I don’t give it. Instead, I let the silence answer.
Then, as if something inside her has snapped, she dives in. She scoops up paint with both hands, smearing streaks of sapphire and fuchsia in bold, unrestrained gestures. The careful, uncertain strokes vanish. Now there is only urgency. A flick of her wrist sends droplets of midnight blue spattering across the surface. She grabs a bottle of crimson and pours it straight onto the canvas, watching in wonder as it spills and spreads, carving paths through the chaos.
Then she hesitates, eyes flickering toward the bottle of turquoise ink.
I say nothing. I wait.
She picks it up with careful fingers, uncaps it, and lets a single drop fall onto the wet acrylic.
Her breath catches.
It moves like liquid energy, threading its way through the layers, sinking, shifting, awakening the colors beneath. She tips the canvas slightly, and the ink glides, feathering into the paint like veins of lightning.
She exhales, her lips parting in awe. “It’s alive,” she murmurs.
She doesn’t ask me how to do it anymore. She knows.
Then something extraordinary happens.
She stops mid-motion, hands dripping with paint. She looks at the canvas, breath caught in her throat.
“I can feel it,” she whispers.
I don’t speak. I wait.
Her hands tremble, not with fear, but with power. I can see it in her eyes. She has touched something real, something deeper than technique or skill. A door inside her has swung open, and she will never be the same.
Tears well in her eyes, but she doesn’t wipe them away. She looks at her hands, then at me.
“This is… me,” she says.
I nod. “Yes.”
She breathes in, steadying herself, and something in her expression changes, not just understanding, but certainty.
Then, with deliberate, fearless movement, she presses her hands into the paint and dives back in, no hesitation, no doubt. The colors explode beneath her touch, raw and untamed, like she’s no longer painting but becoming the painting itself.
She is fully here, painting from within, awake.
And there is no going back.
nirav-art 