“MY MIND – BLOWN” painting

“MY MIND – BLOWN”

2017, acrylic painting on canvas

Original painting by Raine Kapp

“This painting always confuses people. What’s happening here? During this period in my life when it was painted, I felt quite confused myself. Behind me were many years of darkness, pain and confusion. But there was also a glimmer of hope for a better life. And this painting reflects all of that. When I started painting it, I didn’t have any specific meaning or purpose in mind. In my creative process I generally only have a vague understanding of what I’m going to create, usually it all starts with one element or subject or even a color palette, I want to paint and everything else kind of just happens during the painting process and after it’s finished. As if the picture and meaning of it somehow emerges on its own, in its own time. Half the time, I have no idea what I’m doing. And with this painting aslo, I just had a vision; I wanted to paint an astronaut. During the process, an explosion appeared. Is the explosion within us or outside of us? That’s up to each person’s interpretation and may change over time. For months I despised this painting and I couldn’t figure out what was missing from it, only to suddenly gain clarity months after finishing it – it wasn’t missing anything, it was ready, it declared itself ready.

At first the explosion happened outside of me. It became very clear to me how badly we treat the environment we live in as humans and how little most of us care about the planet and it’s habitants or living in harmony with it. And other times, the explosion is within us, where our entrenched perspectives, beliefs, and ideologies shatter into pieces. Our worldview undergoes a radical change. It may seem scary at first, but there’s hope. We’re still standing. We face a kind of a void, the birth place of a new world, and what we do with this space/void is entirely in our own hands. We create our reality every day through what we consume, think, believe, say, and do. And to change these things radically, changes the world we experience outside radically too.

This painting shattered my old belief systems, ideologies and perspectives and made space for something new and better to grow instead. A new life, so to say. A death and rebirth of sorts.”