Creation of a zine about Melancholia and eucalyptus leaves drawings, 2017.

Melancholia
 
For me, melancholia is a transformative experience. It is a temporary depression, an inexplicable sadness that drags you to the bottom of yourself. For a lot of us it is a hard time but, if approached with courage, it could also be regenerating. 
 
Melancholia helps us release stagnant emotions. Comforting it could therefore be a way forward, an opportunity for growth. Knowing that lightness awaits once we resurface, it would be great to find a way to ease those down times and make our path through them a bit smoother. 
 
This is what Imperfect Garden was for me. 
 
For once, I decided to sit with Melancholia. I embraced it. I gave up the fight and went for a walk with it. 
 
At the time of making this work, as an artist, once again, I felt that my creativity has dried out. I felt lost, sad, filled with anxiety. 
One day, whilst reading in the park my eyes were drawn to a pile of dry and sick eucalyptus leaves. Perhaps they were a mirror of a sort. I brought some home with me and started to draw, inspired and comforted by their deformed shapes and cracked patterns. 
It felt good.
And it brought me some ease.
So I kept going, whatever the outcome. 
 
Beautiful decay :
 
By being very attentive to the “ugly” details of the decaying leaves, I have discovered beauty in decay as a part of the cycle of life and creation. Decay leads to regeneration. 
And so could uncomfortable moments of melancholia. If we dare to enter into them with vigor. 

Imperfect_Marine_coutroutsios
©Marine Coutroutsios 2014-2024

All images on this website are copyrighted by Marine Coutroutsios.
The use of any images from this site is strictly prohibited unless prior written permission from the artist is obtained.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the illustrator’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate imagery is expressly prohibited. The artist reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine image learning models.