"Portrait of Frida Kahlo"

(collage and oil painting on cardboard, 22X28, 2009)

"There was a spark in her that was growing and beginning to light up her canvases, to light up her life and, in turn, the lives of others."
Luis Cardoza y Aragon about Frida Kahlo

"Never before had a woman put such agonizing poetry on canvas as Frida did at this time in Detroit."
Diego Rivera

This painting was the very first portrait I painted of Frida Kahlo. I wanted to make it as colorful and complex as Kahlo’s life was. I wanted to empower her with strength and not with pain that she has so often depicted in her own self-portraits. I don’t like concentrating on pain, whether mental or physical. Even though being free of pain is one of the major primordial human (as well as all living creatures’) desires, the humanity’s obsession with pain and suffering seems to intensify as we are becoming more ‘evolved’.

Every major religion and every culture found a way to explain human suffering in terms that made it more bearable for the ones experiencing it. Over the centuries making pain and suffering into a semi-divine affair or a path to knowledge seemed like an easy way to keep people in check. After all little could be done to elevate or eliminate them. Poverty, death, oppression and diseases were unalienable parts of life. In many parts of the world they still are. However, a lot has changed in the Western World.

Nowadays, people live longer and live fuller lives and yet they seem to be less resilient to misfortunes. Instead of focusing on everything good in life a lot of Westerners choose to concentrate on their pain and suffering whether past or present. Not that it’s entirely their fault, since pain and suffering have become so commercialized. After all, if one can receive great amounts of money for either one – one might start subconsciously looking for places to find them. Also psychiatrists, lawyers, talk show hosts are all on the lookout for those who went or are going through pain and suffering, the greater the better.

As for me… I love hearing about people who managed to overcome pain, be it physical or mental, because I’m a believer that although bad things do happen our mission in life is to seek happiness and not to dwell on the negative.