Alann m-a de Vuyst

There comes a time when at some point one feels he has nothing more to say and fights to keep his mind going. I have arrived at that point and I ask myself 'should I stop or should I continue' creating?' (Sounds like The Clash). 

Not that my mind has stopped creating. it never does, and ideas keep on surging. Sometimes when I have half opened up my eyes at dawn, but then I never write it down and half way through the day I have forgotten the whole idea. 

I just read that scientists discovered that our brain is at it's peak at 22 and at 27 it starts deteriorating. Next week I am half a century old, after I read that I wondered how far mine has deteriorated. 

But my drive has gone, I don't find the motivation any longer to sit in front of a canvas and do something on it. ('Do it ', Nike said). 

Perhaps, because I think nobody is waiting for another painting of mine and I just thought of much art there is already out there. I thought of how much I craved freedom of not possessing anything and be able to wander the world without anything but a suitcase or backpack. 

I looked at what i have done in my life and what i have created already. I have had a full life. I am tired of the idea that one has to compete to get the attention, that's what it all seems in the arts world. Competition, to have the latest scope, the latest hattrick before it becomes old hat, the newest idea, the latest shock, and I never was into competition in my life, as a matter of fact I hate it. 

Now here I am, I have to teach English in a foreign country to survive as a painter. The teaching job is so intense that I have no energy left to think of something else or to do anything else. 

My decision to do nothing for the moment has come from a feeling of déjà vu. I have seen the most overwhelming pictures in my head and I wonder why I should try to compete with my brain in getting as close to depicting it as my internal camera saw it. Impossible, every fraction of a second I saw something so perfect beyond imagination. 

I blurted it out: Oh, my lord, how and why would ever want to paint again when I have these images right here in my head. What for? What's the use or point of it? 

Perhaps that has triggered of the the delay in painting new works...I have done a few between last year September and  December this year, but they were only scetches from 2004 put into acrylic paint on canvas and paper, and the Gods knows how I hate to copy myself. 

Let's admit it, I am questioning everything, me, life in general and mine, people, creation in itself...Is it a midlife crisis maybe...I hope I find an exit soon.  I would like to de-compress.