I am not particularly interested in paintings

What interests me is what happens between a person and a painting after years of living together.

When a work of art first enters a home, it is usually chosen for a reason. Perhaps it is the colour, the atmosphere, a feeling that cannot quite be explained. At that moment, it is still an object - something new, something consciously noticed.

But the most interesting part comes later.

The things that shape our lives rarely demand our attention every day. We do not stop each morning to admire the view from our window. We do not think about the chair where we read, the table where conversations unfold, or the familiar light that enters a room in the afternoon. Yet these quiet presences become part of us. They help define what home feels like. They become woven into memory.

I believe paintings can do the same.

A painting may hang on a wall for years, almost unnoticed, becoming part of the rhythm of everyday life. We pass by it hundreds of times. We stop seeing it, and yet somehow it continues to see us. It remains present through celebrations, losses, new beginnings, ordinary mornings, and changing seasons. It quietly witnesses a life being lived.

Then, one day, something unexpected happens.

A colour appears different. A detail emerges that had gone unnoticed for years. A feeling surfaces. A memory returns. The painting has not changed, yet the experience of it has become entirely new.

Perhaps that is because the most meaningful works of art are never truly finished when the artist puts down the brush. They continue to evolve in the life of the person who lives with them. Their meaning deepens as experiences accumulate, as memories gather around them, and as time leaves its invisible marks.

We live in an age saturated with images. Most are designed to capture attention for a moment and then disappear. A painting asks for something different. It asks not for attention, but for time.

And time changes everything.

Over the years, a painting gradually stops being an object of art. It becomes part of a person's inner landscape — as familiar as a cherished book, a beloved place, or a memory that never completely fades.

Perhaps that is why painting still matters.

Not because it tells us something about the artist.

But because, if we live with it long enough, it begins to tell us something about ourselves.