Translator: Chryssa Rapessi Reviewer: Maria Pericleous
Good evening.
I’d like to thank you very much for the honor
of being invited by TEDxUniversityofPiraeus
to be here today.
I am Maria, I am a painter.
I live off my paintings.
I have a business where I sell my work.
I always feel awkward when someone asks me what I do for a living.
I try to think of more mainstream professions related to painting
in order to avoid the same questions that always follow
or that look of bewilderment.
I usually say cartoonist or illustrator, which is an international term.
Worst case scenario, I just tell them I have an e-shop.
I feel great satisfaction when I say that I am a painter,
once I utter the words, I feel infinite relief and pleasure.
I would like to say it with the same ease as I do today
whenever someone asks me what I do for a living.
I’d like to say it without being asked right away,
“OK, but what is your actual job?”
or “Do you make any money from it?”
Many people look at me as though they feel a bit sorry for me,
or as though they don’t take me very seriously.
As if painting can’t stand on its own,
as if it is just a pastime,
done for pocket money, a hobby, but not a proper profession.
It’s a bit of a stereotype in the minds of most people I meet
and that’s OK.
The time has come
to review the painter’s profession
as well as all artistic professions.
A lot of people think that, just because we love our art
and put our body and soul into it,
that gives them the right to haggle, or even have us work for free.
It actually doesn’t work like that.
The painter’s profession exists, and it is heavily taxed.
It requires a lot of energy, psychological, physical and mental.
It requires money, as you are in constant need of materials.
You need light, space, clean air,
a physiotherapist to straighten your back,
an ophthalmologist to treat your eyes,
someone to give you a boost,
and much more, which, believe me, would not be required for a mere hobby.
It’s a demanding and serious job
because you create images through painting
and an image for me is something amazing.
A painting in the Louvre,
a huge graffiti on a street,
a book cover,
a single-stroke drawing on a restaurant napkin.
They all have the exact same power.
They are all able to evoke dozens of feelings.
After all, isn’t that what art is?
Feelings that are shared in order to evoke feelings.
I am self-taught
and I am kind of glad about that.
I always learn from my work
and the painters I admire by following their work.
I studied acting, it was my dream.
Acting is my dream and painting is my consolation.
I didn’t want to say, aged 95, “Too bad I didn’t study what I wanted.”
But theater wasn’t for me.
And this “wasn’t for me”
took a lot of time and strength to admit and to accept.
And it’s still OK.
Because after my acting studies
I finally understood what is for me.
During the summer of 2017, the first dark thoughts came.
After three years full of work, people around me, voices,
music, dance, exercise,
a day came when the silence was deafening.
It was the beginning of a period of panic attacks,
infinite fear for the future,
frightening insecurity.
A period of depersonalization.
I felt as though I had lost myself,
and indeed it was like that.
I felt lost and I was trying to find the way back.
In my case, my fears showed me the way.
This fear of failure, survival
and the good child syndrome
directed me towards a profession
that I had never had faith in before,
and towards a practicality that I couldn’t see clearly before.
Not only did they distance me from things I considered very risky,
like acting on a theater stage,
but also they pushed me towards a life
more in tune with what I really did and didn’t want.
In other words I took some risks, found the courage, considered everything
and started to remove from the table whatever was displeasing me.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,
but I knew what I didn’t want to do.
I didn’t want to have a boss and early mornings.
They both cause me anxiety, sweat
and other unpleasant things.
I wanted to create worlds.
I wanted to work on my personal clock.
I wanted to move more and not sit at a desk.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, I spend endless hours at a desk.
Let’s say I wanted more freedom and flexibility.
And that’s utopian, of course.
Why?
Because no matter how much freedom you want, you are still a worker.
You have responsibilities, obligations, and you have deadlines.
But at least you don’t actually have a boss.
We have the tendency to see fear as a foreign body.
We fight panic attacks, we hide autoimmune disorders,
as if they are foreign bodies that invade our lives
and make it unbearable.
I am all the things that happen to me.
And if my brain doesn’t have the power to tell me
that I have to change something in my life,
my body does so.
It’s an alarm that goes off
and I am the only person who knows the code than disables it.
Painting was always there as a hobby.
As a child, saying I wanted to become a painter
didn’t provoke a positive reaction.
And one time, when I was six or seven years old,
someone told me that I would die on a mat if I became a painter.
And I thought he meant that I would die on a beach mat
in some beautiful place one summer,
and I couldn’t see why it was bad to die on a mat.
It didn’t even occur to me that I could make money from painting,
for real, because this existed as a dream in my head from a young age.
And I guess as I dreamt it,
I had somehow created the scenario of my business in my mind.
So when I took the plunge, it seemed to happen on its own.
Because my subconscious had already worked out the plan.
I had no capital,
it sounds like the American Dream
and the old story of the guy with three dollars in his pocket.
Similarly, with about 30 euros,
I bought some supplies, plus I already had some at home.
My parents.
All they could give me was their blessing
and I started.
A funny thing happened,
initially I made a sketch in a notebook, on the cover,
it was the face of a friend.
I said to her, “I have a gift for you.”
The idea was that she would show it to her other friends,
they would also want one, the orders would roll in,
by word of mouth and from follow to follow.
So we met for a coffee, I gave it to her,
and then a gentleman approached us, took it politely, looked at it,
and he said to me, “Can you make me one as well?”
And that was it.
This is how it all started, non-stop.
Somehow random, but also not so much.
It was as though this gentleman had a huge placard that said,
“You have reached your destination.”
And I haven’t stopped since.
I worked hard and still do,
and especially until I found my way, I can say that it was hard.
I was fully and unrepentantly devoted
and after three years of working nonstop,
during the last year, I somehow managed to find balance
between work, needs and social life.
I can now say that I control it better,
not the scheduling aspect,
I don’t think I will ever manage to do that,
but at least I have become more selective in the work I take on,
so that I can enjoy the process more
but also to offer more quality.
I want what I paint, while I am doing it,
to reciprocate what I am giving to it.
I want it to be an exchange between me and the sketch on the paper.
If I give it love and passion and emotion and light and darkness,
it should give me back the same things and more.
This profession, filled with dozens of emotions,
- and the same is true of every artistic profession -
it requires, above all, our deep and invincible desire to succeed.
You have to be open to showing your inner self to the whole world.
To be yourself.
After all, it’s not a production line.
This is a profession that involves you emotionally.
You need to move with the times and follow trends, of course,
but, to a great extent,
this work has to do with your emotional state
and the way in which you see things.
Because if people can’t see you through your work,
what would be the point?
And when I say you, I don’t mean just your pretty face.
I mean all the negatives, your flaws, your sensitivities.
Not just your black side, I’d rather say your gray side.
Because no matter how you feel,
if you feel like there is no color in your life,
don’t forget that you are a professional
and people don’t want to see just your black or white side.
They want to see your truth.
And our truth can’t be monochrome throughout.
I didn’t start all this focusing on the profits.
I started it because I always wanted it,
because I love it and believe in it.
I wasn’t disappointed when I failed at the theater.
Actually, I never found out whether I failed or not,
because I just didn’t chase it, no matter how magical it is.
Perhaps what didn’t work out,
will eventually show us the way to what will.
And if the next thing doesn’t work out, or the thing after that,
let’s have the strength to say, “This wasn’t for me.”
At least we tried it,
and at 95 we won’t say, “Too bad we didn’t do it.”
In our lives we may succeed at something very few times.
Maybe even one single time.
I believe we should be grateful for everything we have accomplished,
the moment we did it and forever.
If something was a success, it clicked into place, it can’t fail.
The only thing that can happen is for it to stop existing.
Did I finally solve all of my issues?
Did my fears subside?
No to everything.
I never rested on my laurels and I never will.
I see my work as a living organism and a very hungry one at that.
I have to feed it and water it constantly.
Fear will always return, and I think that it will always be the same one.
Fear of survival.
I don’t have the luxury to let this fear take up too much of my time.
Because if I do, I will waste precious time.
Perhaps while I am scared of taking the nest step,
the people who support me and anxiously await my next piece
will be tired of waiting
and just stop buying or browsing through my work.
The best thing I can do with this fear
is to turn it into action for development,
to create continuously, and not let it get hold of me.
Here’s something I learnt at my acting course.
Before every project and every play I took part in during my studies,
I had anxiety for months in advance of the final performance.
And the only way to mitigate this anxiety was to learn my lines perfectly.
To work so hard that I would be flawless when I went on stage
and the only thing to go wrong would be something totally unexpected.
And there, right in front of the audience,
when something unexpected happens,
you will say to yourself “The show must go on”,
and you will perform, whether you like it or not.
This is how I want to deal with every aspect of my life.
If I am afraid of failure,
I invent.
If I am stressed about the result,
I work harder.
If something unexpected happens,
I continue from where I left off and invent even more,
I work harder.
In conclusion.
My professional path used to scare me.
But now, as I am doing what I love,
I wonder if I will be doing it for ever.
As long as I invent and evolve I think I will.
And if not,
I can say that I once did.
(Applause)