WRITING AN EXPLANATION AND WHAT EACH PAINTING REPRESENTS FOR THE ARTIST: SHOULD I DO IT OR NOT?
I don’t know. Because, just like when you read a book and then read it again some time later, its meaning can change — precisely because we change. And as we evolve and transform, so do our thoughts, our way of seeing things, and our way of perceiving the world.
There is the shared world, made of objective facts, which is the same for everyone. However, it is never absolute, because then there is our personal world, made of the perception we have of reality and of our own life. And since we are all different from one another, this perception changes, which makes it subjective.
So there are two worlds, understood as two realities: the common/shared one (which connects human beings) and the personal one (which is ours alone, subjective and individual). And both realities are in constant evolution and change.
But these two worlds are also closely connected, as they continuously influence one another. My world may resemble yours (because we live similar situations, share the same culture, circumstances, etc.), but it will never be identical. Since we are different beings, our reactions and perceptions may also differ. We are like dots on a plane, connected by a single line, forming one unique drawing — which, in this case, could be the image of our planet Earth. We form one vast network, where each dot is an individual, separate yet connected to others. As human beings, we are all linked, because each of us is part of a community, yet at the same time we are separate, since we are first and foremost an individual entity — unique and infinite, constantly evolving.
So, to answer the initial question: yes, I could write what a painting represents for me, but the description would need to be labeled with the day/month/year in which I wrote and conceived it. It would have to be tied to the moment that interpretation was conceived, so that I could later add another one, or change it, or modify it in a way that expresses the same feeling but connected to something different. Because feelings may be the same, but what truly makes them different is the context, the moment, or whatever we link them to — precisely because of this constant interplay between the shared world and the personal world.
For example, if you look at a painting of a girl alone in a room, the common feeling might be sadness, linked to the fact that she is alone — and one might identify their own loneliness with hers. Another person might instead perceive the tranquility of being alone, or the uneasiness of solitude, or might remember a moment when they were physically alone but overwhelmed by the many thoughts in their mind. Feelings and emotions are universal, but what is personal is how each person perceives them, lives them, and connects them to a specific moment or context in their life. There can be a thousand interpretations of an image — none right, none wrong, all unique and personal.
For this reason, perhaps it is not always useful to reveal the artist’s interpretation of the work. People tend to consider that specific interpretation as the “correct” one, the only one that exists — which would contradict everything said before. Moreover, the artwork would become self contained, no longer prompting reflection or emotion. It would lose that interactive function that art, in my opinion, must have to make it meaningful and not merely self referential.
05/2026 NIMA
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