Grief made me a better artist

the big loss

For 23 years of my life, I moved through this world just existing.
The closest I had ever come to losing someone was my great grandma, and even then, I was only around her for a few months before she passed and I wasn’t that close to her. So realistically, I never experienced a “deep” loss.

I knew monetary grief. Relationship grief. Emotional grief.
But nothing like this.

On May 21st, 2023, I got the worst phone call of my life. I woke up to my phone ringing and never in a million years did I think I’d be answering a call telling me my dad had been gunned down. People assume he passed from natural causes, He didn’t. He was another innocent victim of the ongoing crime in my home country. I went about it in a very quiet way. I didn’t tell a lot of my friends how he passed., I was still trying to navigate the news myself.

I remember it like it was yesterday.
The panic.
The anxiety.
Waiting for confirmation.
Then getting it and feeling my entire world collapse.

It didn’t really hit me until I saw my dad lying unresponsive. For 23 years of my life, I had never spoken to my dad and not gotten a response. Seeing the person who was my whole world just lying there was a pain I didn’t even have language for. I still don’t. Almost three years later, I honestly don’t know what the f**k I’m dealing with. Grief is funny like that.

My dad lived unresponsive in the ICU for two weeks before he let go. A decision I respect deeply. He worked up until his very last conscious moments. He always worked. He provided for me and for everyone around him. I could talk about my dad forever I love him so much. He was the best father I could ask for. Ask him who he loved more than anything and he’d always say my name. Amaya. I was his world.

I wasn’t prepared to take that loss. I was supposed to see him the next month. But life doesn’t wait for you to be ready. Not for the good. Not for the bad.

For three months, I didn’t sleep until the sun came up. Then I’d go sleep on the veranda. I was spaced out, trying to accept a reality that didn’t make sense. How do you accept that the one person who kept you is gone? The person who motivated you. The person who saw you being an even greater artist than you saw yourself becoming.

Gone.

Where the Shift Happened

That loss cracked something open in me. Especially as an artist.
I hadn’t painted for two years.

One night I was moving some of my paintings from my storage to my house, and I rest one on top of the car and tie it down (this is where you realize that Perception was not the original of its kind, but actually a second version. The original had randomly flown off the roof of the car and disappeared into thin air).

The original.

So yeah basically we tied the painting to the top of the car and somehow we get to the house and the painting is gone ? so that immediately sent me back into grieving cause at that point i’m just like why the f**k I keep losing shit that I love like what the f**k ? like I had a whole mental breakdown over a painting.

The next day, I walked into the studio and said f**k it. I’m going to remake it. And I’m going to make it better.

And that , I did.

Before my dad passed, I was surviving as an artist, not thriving. I stayed in my comfort zone. I avoided fear at all costs. I didn’t want to push. I lived comfortably and treated art like something I could keep as a hobby. Like it wasn’t my whole life.

It f**king was.

Grief whooped my a$$. But in a way that saved me.

When you lose someone like that, someone you saw every day, someone who was always one call away, it shakes you to your core. My mind was doing laps. Constant noise, constant spiraling. I needed it to stop.

So I tapped out.

Learning to Tap Out

It took years of therapy and meditation to learn how to quiet my brain. There’s a switch, but everyone’s switch is different. Mine activates through painting. Instantly. Everything and everyone goes quiet. It’s just me in the room.

I learned to listen to my body because the switch turns off too, just the same as it turns on. You can’t stay there forever unless you want to lose your mind. So now I know when it’s fading and I come back. Back into the world.

Grief made me quiet in the studio. I can have music blasting, my body moving, singing, locked in. But am I aware of it? Not really. I’m on autopilot. My soul is relaxed. My body just follows.

That’s when my work changed.

I stopped forcing meaning. I stopped trying. I let the work be anything. Everything. My paintings got more honest because I wasn’t chasing anything anymore. I was letting it come straight from source.

Grief taught me how to become an alchemist.

I had one rule while grieving. Let yourself crash. Don’t toughen up and keep it pushing. Soften. Let the waves come. If you don’t let them move through you, they’ll hit harder later.

What Grief Gave Me

Grief made me stop caring about opinions. It took time, but once it clicked, it clicked. People cannot be pleased. The only person you really need to please is yourself. If you’re doing that, you’re doing f*****g okay.

It unleashed a new style in my work. It was always there, hiding in earlier pieces, but it wasn’t ready yet. The emotions I painted with before don’t show up anymore. Now I let go and let it be. I look at my work now and I’m shocked. Like damn. This is what my dad saw in me. I didn’t know I had this in me. I didn’t think I possessed the qualities to make work like this.

I lost patience for bullsh*t. For nonchalance. For cockiness. And if an artist ever acts nonchalant, it’s a lie. We are very much chalant. Trust me.

If my old work met my current work in a room, my old work would say, “I wanna be like you one day.”And my new work would say, “But you are me.”

One doesn’t exist without the other.

I make art now for me. Not for approval. I do this because I want to live with no stones unturned. My dad always said “one day”. One day he’d go to the beach. One day he’d swim. He never did. He was always working. I think about that every time I tell myself one day.

Because tomorrow is not promised. Not even the other half of today.

If grief never happened, I don’t think I would be a thriving as an artist. My plan was to graduate and go home to my dad. Everything was waiting for me there. I would’ve painted sometimes. Casually. Comfortably.

I would not be the painter you know today. And that truth hurts. But it’s also the reason I’m here.