Predestination: Painting, Memory, and the Illusion of Control

I grew up religious.

With a sense of belonging came a sense of shared fear that left deep scars on me. I used to fear the world, people, spiders, even pumping my own gas. I was a small fish in a small pond, constantly reminded that something out there was waiting.

As I get older that life feels like it doesn’t belong to me anymore. I have fragments of memories from that time, but they don’t feel real. They feel like still frames from a movie. Moments from someone else’s life.

I don’t know if that version of me would even like who I am today.

I think he would probably be afraid of me.

When my family left, I had already started trying to become someone else. But as you grow up, you learn that changing old patterns is hard.

It takes work.

Even something as simple as standing up straight, no longer carrying shame in your posture, takes time. I remember spending months trying to walk without slouching.

Even now, years later, I still catch myself slipping back into it.

The past doesn’t disappear. It changes shape.

I’m still uneasy around groups.

Not because of people individually, but because of what happens when people come together. The way ideas can be shared, repeated, and eventually feel like truth.

I became fiercely independent once I found my voice, because I remember too clearly what it felt like to speak words that were not my own.

There were moments where something inside me would snap awake and ask:

What was that?

I worry sometimes that I push that on you too much.

Always telling you to question everything. Even me.

But especially yourself.

And what does any of this have to do with painting?

I’m not entirely sure.

But the painting I want to talk about comes directly out of that past.

It’s called Predestination.

Predestination was something I was raised to believe in. A fixed path. A life already decided.

I rejected that idea when I left.

But as I’ve gotten older, something has shifted.

I don’t hate religion anymore. I don’t even reject it entirely. I think I’ve just redefined it.

Painting has become something like a church for me.

It’s where I feel close to whatever it is we call God. Or creation. Or energy.

It’s where I feel like myself.

Where I belong.

When I paint, I don’t feel like a small fish anymore.

I feel like I’m holding the ocean.

Like I can move things. Shape things. Change direction.

I used to ask people, if we’re made in the image of a creator, shouldn’t we all want to create?

At least in some way.

Predestination grew out of Transcendence.

The fire from that painting was still burning, and I needed to understand why.

So I started another painting without knowing what it was supposed to be.

I used an old canvas again. A city I didn’t like. Something I was willing to destroy.

Transcendence had already shown me that painting over old work could give something new depth and history.

So I asked the surface questions again.

If fire was the end of one painting…

Could it be the beginning of another?

The first painting moved from roots to fire.

This one asked:

What if fire becomes roots?

Cycles always return.

The fire spread across the canvas, wild and uncontrolled. Embers floated through the space.

At some point I started to see them differently.

Not as destruction.

As seeds.

They needed somewhere to land.

So the surface opened.

And where they landed, roots began to grow.

What struck me wasn’t just the imagery, but the feeling of it.

The way each decision felt like it had already been made.

Like the painting was revealing something rather than being built.

When the first opening appeared in the surface, allowing an ember to take root, it felt like that moment had been waiting for years.

Like it had always been there.

Even when the painting was still a city.

The fires on the left side of the canvas made me question something else.

Is this all random?

Or is it inevitable?

If you throw enough embers into the air, one is bound to land somewhere.

The old city beneath the painting still shows through in places.

The lights bleed into the new surface, giving it energy I couldn’t have planned.

It made me wonder if that had always been its purpose.

To become something else later.

And that’s where the idea started to circle back.

Did I choose this life?

Or did I arrive at it?

I spent years rejecting the idea of destiny. Choosing my own path. Questioning everything.

Only to arrive somewhere that feels… strangely familiar.

Like I was always going to end up here.

I don’t know if that means anything.

I don’t know if it’s belief, or memory, or just the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of things.

I wonder if you’ll wrestle with those same questions one day.

I’ve tried to give you choices. Different paths.

But at some point you’ll push away my ideas and find your own.

And maybe one day you’ll come back to some of them.

Or maybe you won’t.

Maybe none of that matters.

Maybe what matters is that we arrive when we arrive.

That we follow the path as it unfolds.

That the journey is just the journey.

And somehow…

We always get there.

The cycle continues.