Melancholy

A woman sits tilted in a chair, her position not quite stable. I drew her off-balance on purpose, to hold the mood in her very posture.

Melancholy lives on the delicate border between sadness and calm — a serene kind of sadness, the sort that comes to people who've understood something about life. And life is woven from both joy and sorrow, with the sorrows, if we're honest, often outnumbering the joys. We move through it cherishing the pleasures and meeting the hardships all the same.

I find a strange solace in accepting that. Sadness can't be avoided; it's part of being alive. But it's also transient — it gives way, in time, to joy again. That knowledge is what steadies me.

So she gazes out with the eyes of a young woman, off-balance but unafraid, aware of all that's still to come.

An original figurative drawing. Signed.

Jolanta