The Ivy

THE IVY
Ivy doesn't ask permission. It finds a surface and it climbs — slowly at first, then everywhere, winding through every gap, filling every space that isn't actively defended against it. Left unattended, it can cover an entire structure in a season. Left long enough, it can bring down walls.
We all have our ivy.
The thoughts that return without invitation. The loops that start in the small hours and are still running at midday. The particular patterns of self-doubt, of old fears, of narratives inherited from people who were themselves afraid — these grow the way ivy grows: quietly, persistently, without malice, and with extraordinary patience. They don't announce themselves. They simply appear, again and again, on the walls of the mind that we thought we had cleared.
The vessel in this painting carries them visibly. The ivy winds across the container of the human being — the jarrón that holds everything we are — not destroying it but clinging to it, decorating it with the particular dark green of thoughts that have been there long enough to feel like part of the architecture.
But above it all, the night sky.
Clear. Deep blue. And across it, stars that tingle with gold — not distant and cold but warm, immediate, personal. The same sky that is always there above the ivy, that the ivy has never managed to reach, that remains available to any consciousness willing to look up from the walls it has been staring at.
The vessel is the choice. Every human being decides, every day, what to fill it with. The ivy will always try to grow. The gold is also always there.
76 × 76 cm · Acrylic, gesso and Posca markers on canvas panel · 2022 · One of a kind Unframed. Signed, titled and dated on the reverse. Certificate of Authenticity included.