When we think about buying art, we usually picture a single artwork.
One piece.
One moment captured on a wall.
But the longer I create, the more I find myself wondering whether we ever buy just the artwork.
When I pick up a favorite book, I’m not buying paper and ink.
I’m buying a way of seeing the world.
When I return to a beloved album, I’m not buying a collection of songs.
I’m revisiting the emotions it awakens in me.
Why should visual art be any different?
Some artworks captivate us through their form.
Their colors.
Their composition.
And that is enough.
Not every artwork has to tell a story.
But some pieces are created as part of something larger.
A chapter.
An essay.
A manifesto.
An entire collection.
They are not isolated islands.
They belong to a shared language.
I’ve long been fascinated by the idea that an artist doesn’t have to be confined to a single medium.
Why should a story end with the final page of a book?
Why should an artwork exist completely separately from the words that inspired it?
Perhaps they can continue the same conversation.
An essay can become the beginning of an artwork.
An artwork can become another interpretation of an essay.
One medium doesn’t replace the other.
It expands it.
That’s how And I Called It Freedom came to life.
It began with words.
Reflections.
Questions.
Only later did those ideas begin to take visual form.
The artworks are not illustrations of the book.
Nor are they literal translations of its chapters.
They are another way of exploring the same ideas.
Not through sentences.
But through color.
Composition.
Rhythm.
Make-Believe Collection grew in a different way.
It started with a single artwork.
From that one piece, an entire visual world began to emerge.
The following works are not copies.
They are conversations with the original.
As if one idea kept echoing in different directions.
The more I create, the more I think about art in this way.
Not as individual works.
But as worlds we are invited to enter.
Some are quiet.
Some are filled with symbols.
Some leave us with more questions than answers.
But all of them invite us to stay a little longer.
Perhaps that is why I never think of my work as decoration.
Decoration has fulfilled its purpose the moment it is placed on a wall.
Art can be the beginning of something.
It can lead you to a book.
To another artwork.
To an essay.
To a symbol that may not reveal its meaning until much later.
Not everything needs to be understood at once.
So perhaps the real question is not whether we buy an artwork.
Perhaps the better question is whether we are willing to step into the world that exists behind it.
Sometimes one artwork is enough.
And sometimes it becomes only the first chapter.
