GRAVITY

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"It took me more than two years to paint Gravity. At first, it meant nothing. I thought it was disposable, just a way to pass through to the next thing. I didn’t even begin to take it seriously until I came to Germany. The isolation of leaving the States pressed down on me. The breakup I was going through hollowed me out. My sanity was stretched thin. I wasn’t sure I was a painter anymore—wasn’t sure I was anything at all.

Most days I sat in front of the canvas in silence, staring at it with dread. I had nothing. I was nothing. No talent, no voice, nothing to offer. But I forced myself to mix paint anyway, to stab into the darkness. The figure resisted me—it was stiff, awkward, impossible. The background was too detailed, the whole thing too heavy, too expensive for something I was sure wasn’t worth it.

But I painted anyway. And inside the struggle, small flashes appeared. Glimpses of ideas, reflections, fragments of something just beyond my reach. I didn’t know what it was, but it was alive. Titles floated to me, then vanished. I was in pain, too much pain to continue, but I kept moving my hand in the hope that maybe—on the other side—I would find some resolution. Even if that resolution was to quit.

At last, after a brutal birth, the painting was finished. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know if it was good. But it was the best I could do, and for that, I was satisfied.

And then the memories came. The pose of the figure—it was the same pose I had held for the only painting my father ever did of me, when I was eight. I remembered what that time meant: the end of my childhood, already fragile. From that point forward: chaos. Rage. Jealousy. Violence. My house collapsing into hatred and abuse, until it split apart for good. I was told I wasn’t a child anymore. That chapter was over. And so began the darkness.

No wonder the figure fought me. I never liked that pose. It made me uncomfortable in my bones. Every attempt to fix it failed. So I left it. But the painting still resisted me in other ways—the horror of it, the endless time it consumed, the voices in my head telling me it wasn’t worth it. Still, I trudged forward.

And in the end, it revealed itself. I finished it, and I liked it—though it still felt strange, broken, incomplete. Then the title came: Gravity.

Suddenly, everything aligned. The struggle of tearing away from my past, the agony of losing the love of my life. The figure torn apart, fighting against gravity. That awkward pose wasn’t an error—it was the message. A clue left by my eight-year-old self, carried through decades. The lines of linear thought streaming from his head as he fights against the very thing he longs for: transcendence, release, the chance to leave the prison of self.

Growth is never comfortable. The figure is not in conflict with the outside world—it is in conflict with familiarity itself.

When the title struck me, it hollowed me out. I was empty. Exhausted. It was me. It was her. It was loss. It was fear. I wept uncontrollably for weeks. Every time I looked at it, the knife twisted. The truth burned.

And yet—that truth meant the painting wasn’t mine alone. I hadn’t known what I was painting, and that terrified me, but it also meant something had passed through me, something larger, something that could reach someone else.

The song “Gravity” by A Perfect Circle was bound to our relationship, and only after the painting was complete did I see it: how whole, how complete the work and the experience had been. I never know what I’m painting when I begin. Meaning arrives later. And this time, it arrived like a revelation—Gravity tore me open, showed me myself, and left me raw."

-PD