1. How should I introduce you?
Wildflower soul who believes in slow living:)
When I die just bury me under a tree and let the wildflowers grow on me, don’t plant the fanciest flowers, for my soul belongs to the wild ones, the ones who were never welcomed home, who never were placed in the swanky glass vase, who could never impress a lover...but my darling I belong to you, so grow without the fear of being less loved, because you would be loved and cherished on my grave by my soul
2. What does your work aim to say/do?
Welcome to my world of Wildflowerink...
Where a fish can fly, a bird can knit a sweater, a bug can be the queen, a place you can be anything you wish to be or just be nothing
A world where no one tries to put you in a box, where no one judges you for what you do or don’t, where you are wild and free and you don’t know any other way of living!
As Sufis whirl in search of God, poetry and love
I whirl when I paint, the closest I have ever been to Love, Poetry or God is when I hold that brush in my hand. There is just pure simple love, no expectation or attachment or "nafs" just boundless love.
It's serene, it's calming, it's meditative
I paint fantasies not to escape the reality but to live more peacefully
3. Book recommendation!
If I have to read just one book all my life -
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype By Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.
If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the compliment-or, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."
"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realize it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.
There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.”
4. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it - metaphorically speaking, getting a message to millions, what would it say and why? It could be few words, or a paragraph, it could also be someone else’s quote.
Do you know what happiness looks like on you?
Well it looks like this to me!!! I never had a goal in my life...never! I thought I was weird, a loser or just lazy!!There were years where I would work my ass off, sometimes for a passion but most times to prove something to the world. I didn’t realised when i started exhausting myself, and in a couple of years there was nothing of me left in me. And boy I was successful for the world...at the age of 24 I was an entrepreneur...I was supplying jewellery to 15 of the best stores in India within 3 months of starting my brand and got 6 major coverages including full page Bombay Mirrors, cosmopolitan and what not!! But I wasn’t happy, I thought I was... I worked almost 16-18 hrs a day because I don’t know what else to do...that is all I have known for past years- to work and work till you exhaust yourself to sleep! And then painting happened to me in 2019... I slowly slipped into this world of fantasy, where nothing else and no one else mattered... I became quite, I became happy rather ecstatic ...today I could sit for hours and just be quite!! I am content...I don’t long for anything, I guess what living in the moment means...it’s blissful ...if you are one like me struggling to fit into the world, please don’t ...trust me... you don’t need it...it’s a scam!!
5. What obsessions do you explore in the evenings or the weekends?
I read about food particularly ayurveda and experiment with new dishes
6. What would you (if you could) tell yourself when you were 18? What advice would you ask your younger self to ignore?
Slow down
7. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? (If it helps, what question do you ask yourself to get you back on track?)
Even if I have nothing to paint, I just hold a brush in my hand and sit in front of a canvas I have painted and remember the time when I could only dream of being able to paint one day, it’s a beautiful feeling, I got goosebumps just by thinking of it, that’s love, just pure love, my ikigai
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