Untold
The Story Behind the Painting
With this art, I wanted to draw what a life can leave behind.
I wanted to draw someone who has learned not to explain himself.
The Face
There is something tired in his eyes but not defeated. Something has happened to him, perhaps many things, but he is still looking straight ahead, as if he has finally made peace with the fact that some wounds do not need to be understood by anyone else.
Each Line is a Passing Time
The lines around his face feel restless, almost like memories that refuse to stay still. They cross his forehead, his eyes, his mouth, each one carrying a little more of the person he used to be.
Maybe that is what time does to us.
It doesn't simply pass.
It leaves itself on us...
...A little in the eyes.
A little in the silence.
A little in the way we look at the world.
To me, he shows something: a memory, a loss, a quiet moment, a difficult day, a person who came into his life, something he loved, something he had to let go of.
Some lines are soft. Some are heavy. Some almost disappear beneath the others.
Just like life.
We don't get to choose which moments stay with us. They all become part of us, somehow. And after enough time, you can no longer separate the person from the things they've lived through.
And eventually, we become a portrait of everything we have survived.
I drew this face because sometimes a person can say nothing at all
and still tell you everything.
~ M. Dhillon
Where Art Comes to Life