I refuse the claim that art has a decorative function — that it should beautify a space or make life more pleasant for the viewer; the likeability factor. This indefinable human expression, with so many paths, turns, and winding galleries, reaches into a realm that only brushes against reality. It’s a land where freedom reigns in its purest form, alongside emotions — deeply personal and often unique.

The artisan creates with the destination in mind. The artist, unlike a graphic designer, doesn’t care to communicate. He dissolves into the journey. His task is to become a vessel—pure as possible—between raw energy and the physical world. Control of the medium should be minimal, creating instead a mirror in which each person reflects their own emotions. That’s why some may be irritated by a work that others adore. If a piece leaves you indifferent, and you’re not a pathological narcissist, then it isn’t art.

At first, one wonders if suffering is truly necessary to give birth to something real. Must pain be poured into a world that already needs more tenderness? Only over time does one realize that even happiness carries suffering within it—it is woven into our fragility. Death is what makes everything precious, breathtaking, and fleeting.

But how it saddens me, this belief that youth inevitably dulls with adulthood, weakening the fire in one’s chest, fading colors, smoothing edges. One day the scent of grass at night in the countryside would no longer make my heart leap. The wind would no longer scare me, and storms would no longer pin me in awe between wide-open windows. And the thought that love, once so fierce, could turn into placid affection has always been unacceptable to me.

Before turning eighteen, I swore I would not let the years change me—not in that way. It was like a spell, and I never grew up. In an instant, I can still sink into the same torment of those days: restlessness doesn’t belong to adolescence but to those who crave it.

Staying in this limbo makes life harder; I rarely find true kin. Those who claim to be often deceive themselves, and rebels I once loved have cooled more than I ever thought possible. Yet this raw energy still draws to me people and situations that go far beyond reality, which taken alone is mortally boring. Its seemingly unbreakable rules, in which so many happily wrap themselves for comfort and protection, make me restless and weary.

Only art saves me. Only art that is not pretty, not pleasant, not decorative, that doesn’t sell itself or bow down, will save the world.