After staying

When I first recognized a figure in this painting, I saw a curled-up woman with her face hidden in her hands. To me, the posture felt protective, inward, heavy — as if the body was withdrawing from something it could not fully hold. That reading came quickly and almost automatically. I was seeing vulnerability first.

With time, my relationship to the painting changed. The image stayed the same, but I was able to stay with it longer.

Now I no longer see her as hiding. I see her resting. Holding her head the way one does in sleep. The hands are not covering the face, but supporting it. The inward movement no longer feels like collapse, but like a pause — a moment of recovery rather than defense.

The small circular forms — like bubbles — began to feel different as well. At first they seemed like interruptions, almost disturbances. Now they feel closer to thoughts drifting, quiet breaths, or fragments of dreams surfacing and dissolving. They don’t break the stillness of the body; they move gently around it, as if the mind is allowed to wander while the body rests.

This shift mattered to me, because it revealed something I hadn’t noticed at first: this painting does not insist on a single emotional truth. It allows different states to exist within the same form. What once felt like burden can also be care. What looked like enclosure can also be safety without confinement.

Strong works often do this.

They first reveal what the viewer is afraid of, and later reveal what the viewer has learned to trust.

This is why I chose the title Shelter Without Walls.

For me, the painting is not about retreat from the world, but about an internal shelter — one that does not require barriers, and does not require disappearance. It is about a kind of rest where thoughts can rise and pass freely, without needing to be controlled.

Perhaps this also reflects something about awakening. At first, becoming aware can feel heavy. Seeing more often means carrying more. But with time, that same awareness can soften. It can become a place of rest. Not because the world becomes easier, but because I learn how to hold myself within it.

The painting did not change.

I did.