This one came out of me like a prism exploding in slow motion. Every line, every curve, every color pocket is a different version of reality trying to make eye contact with the others. Some days I think it’s a map of a soul mid-reincarnation. Other days, it feels like a satellite photo of thoughts being born at once across parallel lives.

I didn’t sketch anything for this. It just flowed, like the painting already existed and I was just uncovering it. Each shape is a room. A dimension. A timeline. A feeling. They don’t compete. They just are. All coexisting, folded into one another like the universe playing origami with itself.

I believe we’re all doing this by living a dozen lives at once, even if we’re only aware of one. Dreaming different dreams. Loving different people. Learning the same lessons again and again in different skin. Time isn’t a line. It’s a web. And somewhere in the center, we’re laughing at the illusion that it was ever linear.  As humans, we figured out how to measure something that is only an illusion.  Most people wear this illusion on their wrist every day.

This painting is me saying, “You’re not stuck. You’re just zoomed in too far.”
Back up. Breathe. And maybe you’ll see the other doors.

–Nicholas Mokashi