Visuals

so I chose to paint this painting in different shades of the same colour and in a more abstract manner. This is because I want people to interpret it in their own way.
At the sides you see darker shapes and these represent 2 people watching the 2 people in the middle. The area between their heads is shaped like a road.
On that road you can see 2 people. One who's a bit taller and one who's smaller with long hair looking up at the taller person.

The story behind the art

So the story I try to tell with this art piece is a story of a small girl who gets taken down a bad road by an adult, and the people who notice don't help but are just watching.

I've had some experiences myself where I was walking down a dark road, but didn't notice it myself at that time. There were obviously people who did know that I walked down a dark road, for example people who knew the other person. However never once did anybody who knew that person tell me to not engage in contact with him or warned me about him.
Even when I did ask for help to some friends they just stood by and watched.

Now I'm not telling solely my own story with this art piece, but the story of many people, and even the story of the people who were just watching. There are moments when you see someone who's walking down a wrong path with a wrong person and you literally can't do anything about it, may it be because of your age, the other person not believing you or even just because you're too inexperienced or too scared to help.
My friends that I asked for help were also really young and inexperienced with these type of problems, so it's not really weird that they didn't help me. In fact maybe it even reminded them of a painful experience they once had or were even in! It's only natural to try to distance yourselves from things that bring you pain.

There are however so many young people getting groomed, falling for lover boys, getting into toxic relationships, hanging out with the wrong type of people and getting lured into doing bad things for money.
If that ever happened to you (or someone you know) know that none of it was your own fault, even if you were stubborn and even if you "could have known". The only person who was at fault is that person that lures you down that road, that person who knows exactly what they are doing.
People say that it's important to teach people, especially young girls, to be wary of lover boys, to stand up for themselves, to learn the dangers of drugs etc.
I don't disagree with that at all, I even agree with that, but I also think that it's very important to teach young people what effect luring people down these type of dark roads can have on them! Every lover boy once was young, every drugs dealer once was in school and probably got a lecture about why drugs are bad for yourself, but that didn't stop them from harming others!

It's important to teach people what kind of effect their behaviour can have on others, and maybe that won't change all people, but it's so important to teach this to people when they are young because young people are still developing, and so that makes it the most effective time to teach them these things.
Also a lot of people keep these kind of topics away from their kids. Kids who don't know anything about drugs or sex or any other adult topic. I'm not telling to tell your kid the details, but for example just tell kids that drugs exist and that when someone offers them to them that they shouldn't take it because it's bad for them.
There are a lot of people who are super naive to these kind of things just because they never were told anything about them, and so they will believe that first person who brings up the topic even if it's a stranger! Because nobody ever told them otherwise. You never know how young your kid is going to be when they first come in touch with something like that so my advice is explain your kid these topics when they are still young and in a way appropriate to their age so that they are not completely naive about it.



So eventually this post turned a bit into a rant about how to prevent young people going down dark paths. That's because the meaning behind this painting is so deep to me. There is a lot of pain in this painting pain from the people who watch the kid going down that road, and pain from the kid that was too naive to see that the person they trusted led them down that dark road.

This painting is currently on sale at my webshop, click here to go to the sales page.