Feelings and their depiction through art: A revelation

In my early days of learning art, I had to attempt an interesting exercise on abstract art. The exercise required me to depict a negative feeling of loneliness in my art. I used all the dark colours and tried to capture the negativity associated with the feeling of loneliness.

When I finished the painting and showed it to some people, they said it didn’t look like loneliness. Instead, they told me that it looked as if someone is coming out of the loneliness. I wasn’t able to understand that what went wrong. I used the right colors, right techniques but still I wasn’t able to deliver what I wanted.

On deeper thoughts, I realized that I wasn’t actually feeling the emotion of loneliness while painting. It is said that when one tries to make an attempt at abstract art, the innermost feelings come out first. The time when I made this painting, I had started living with my family again. Probably, I was a bit lonely before away from my family. Most of my friends had also relocated to different places. 

This small incident on depicting feeling of loneliness made me realized so many things about painting:

• A painting can tell you a lot of things about yourself which you didn’t realize earlier.
• It’s very important to feel an emotion that you want to represent through your painting.
• In case that emotion doesn’t come naturally to you, you can think of a person or an incident or object that relates to that emotion.