Reference, or Conditioning?

The day I entered the art world, one instruction followed me everywhere:
Look at this artist. Look at that work. Refer to them. Learn from them.

It sounded harmless at first. But slowly, it began to feel familiar—not just in art, but in life.

Since childhood, many of us are taught to look up to someone.
Compare. Measure. Follow.
Children are compared with other children. Careers are compared with other careers. Success is defined by resemblance, not resonance. Somewhere along the way, looking inward becomes secondary to looking outward.

This conditioning does not stop at life. It enters art.

My earlier works are often described as “decorative.”
But decoration was never the intention.

Those works were made at a time when I felt nothing—absolute numbness. When feeling disappears, variation disappears with it. I did not choose spirals, waves, or repetition as aesthetic decisions. They were simply what existed in my mind. When you feel nothing, you do not distinguish. You repeat. You loop. You survive.

Expecting dramatic contrast or conceptual clarity from a numb state is like expecting sound from silence.

Today, my work looks different. Not because I suddenly became more “developed” or “educated,” but because I can feel again. I feel sadness, joy, hope, love. Color returns when emotion returns. Forms change when perception changes. Intention follows feeling—not the other way around.

Yet this shift is often read by the system as “growth,” while the earlier phase is seen as “lack.” To me, that also feels like a form of conditioning.

The same conditioning appears when art is scored.
Numbers. Ratings. Percentages.
As if art were an exam. As if work created during emotional collapse could be reduced to metrics.

Suggestions are welcome. Dialogue is welcome.

But when art is scored, it can lose its context, timing, and necessity—turning what was once survival into something that feels like performance.

I often feel that this obsession with reference, comparison, and scoring reflects a larger pattern—a world that seems to prefer safety over sincerity, stability over questioning, and repetition over risk, as long as it appears respectable.

I do not hold a degree in fine arts. I hold a master’s degree in commerce. During my studies, I often encountered a line repeated in management theory: management is an art—it cannot truly be taught. Curriculums exist, but something essential must already live inside a person. History proves this again and again. Many successful ventures are built by people without MBAs, sometimes without formal education at all.

This raises a question: how essential is formal study, reference, or imitation—especially when intuition already exists?

I may be criticized for saying this, but I do not consciously refer to other artists while creating. Not out of arrogance, but because I want my art to remain my voice. When I look at art, I look as a viewer—to feel, not to extract. I do not go home trying to recreate what I have seen.

My mother never taught us to be like someone else. I cannot ask her why anymore, but I am deeply grateful. She never conditioned me to fit into a predefined mold. Even though she is no longer here, I credit her for giving me the courage to step away from a “respectable” path and move toward something that makes me feel like myself. After her, my life has largely been a struggle between what I wanted and what others expected of me.

At eighteen, an uncle once showed me a photograph of a young woman traveling the world with her husband. “Look at her,” he said. “She married early. She doesn’t need a job. She’s happy.”
I stayed silent—questioning elders is frowned upon here. But I remember thinking: why would I need a man to take me places when I could take myself?

The most damaging form of conditioning is gender.
Why do we say someone walks, talks, or eats “like a man” or “like a woman”? Who decided this? Why do we inherit these rules without ever questioning them?

I am done accepting instructions on how a life should be lived. We are all going to die anyway. At least try. Failure is not the opposite of success—never trying is.

I do not refer outward to become something else. I refer inward to remain myself. To the soul, to nature, to what arrives uninvited and cannot be taught. If my work has a reference, it is not borrowed—it is lived.

I have tried many things and failed at many. People have mocked me. I do not care. At least I tried. In the eyes of others, I may appear successful. For myself, I am still searching—and that search keeps me alive.

Painting, drawing, writing—I can do these all day. I love them. Whether this path brings recognition or not does not matter to me. What matters is that it fills my soul and makes me feel complete.

And if one day my voice reaches someone who feels nothing but numbness—and they feel even a trace of hope—that will be enough.