Tag: mood

“Etude in the Key of Freedom” – A Painting by Margaret Irene

Published on by Margaret BenbowLeave a comment

After painting my Mood Flower series, I felt like it was time to move on from painting depression. With this piece, I want to express the bliss I have experienced from finally just being myself after many years of insecurity and self-consciousness.

The dancer wears a minimalistic dress as she dances in an ice-cold landscape, representing how it feels to pursue our dreams in spite of the immense challenges we often face along the way. The snowy wonderland symbolizes adversity, and the blissful expression on her face represents the peace that comes with being true to ourselves. The path she takes is made of piano keys to represent the concept of creating our own path in life, or “dancing to your own tune”.

This artwork is the first in a series of dancer paintings.

Melancholy

Published on by Margaret BenbowLeave a comment

I was typing the backstory to this painting on Facebook when I realized it was long enough to deserve its own blog post. So here we go…

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve loved the sound of rain. I’m a ‘pluviophile’, as they’re now called. As a little girl, I fell in love with the sound of raindrops falling on the roof and the driveway pavement outside my bedroom window. It rained heavily during the winters of my childhood in Chile, the part of my life in which I struggled with my first bouts of depression. Something about the sound of rain soothed me during those difficult times.

This painting, titled ‘Melancholy’, is based on a simple, experimental painting I did back in early 2016. The flower is a Dark Geranium. Geraniums come in different colors, all of which are associated with different meanings.

The Dark Geranium, in particular, is my favorite flower and not only because I think it’s pretty. Rather, its meaning is what draws me to it. The Dark Geranium symbolizes melancholy, a mood familiar to many creative people. Many poets throughout history have written about this mood, including Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, and Emily Dickinson. It’s a feeling of “pensive sadness” or depression, usually without an apparent cause. Many creative people (poets, musicians, and artists) often experience melancholy in between bursts of creativity. I’m one of those people who go through that cycle, and I’ve been this way since childhood.

I was inspired to revisit the concept of this painting after recently coming out of another bout of depression. I can tell you how depression feels physically (exhaustion, loss of motivation, etc.), but explaining the mood part is difficult. I’m not a poet and can’t quite describe with words exactly how it feels so I painted it instead. I felt that if I could somehow visually capture the sound of rain and pair it with the symbolism of the Dark Geranium that it would enable me to express this dark, recurring mood that I’ve experienced all my life.

This painting sold at auction for $550.