Colours, Saudade, and the Weight of Feeling
From fashion school to paint-splattered canvases, Clara speaks about freedom, music, and the cost of feeling too much.
Field notes
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2-4 mins
Clara’s paintings began almost by accident — late nights in Paris, a mentor who told her to forget the rules, colours that felt more like emotions than technique. Her story is about creativity as survival, about finding freedom in places that tried to put her in a box.
We met in her shared Paris atelier. Light pushed through tall windows and caught on paint jars scattered across a long table. Brushes sat in coffee tins, bristles stiff with colour. Canvases leaned against the wall, edges smudged with fingerprints.
Clara laughed as she told me about her Swiss German teacher at the Beaux-Arts night school. “He said there are no rules, don’t think about technique. And I was like, man, I don’t know how to paint, I need something.”
From Fashion to Paint
Clara never studied fine art. She went to fashion school. “For most people, that’s another world. For me, it’s connected. Fashion still has rules. Clothes have to be wearable. Painting is the most free thing.”
She paints when emotions rise — sadness, joy, or what she calls saudade, a word she picked up in Brazil. “It’s nostalgia mixed with gratitude. Like when you remember something and you think, I’m so lucky I lived that. That’s what I paint sometimes.”
She pointed to a canvas propped against the wall. A bare figure stood defiant, colours clashing at the edges. “It’s feminist for me. My body, my business. I don’t want to analyse it too much. I painted it, and afterwards I thought, okay, that’s what it is.”
Paris and the Puzzle of People
Paris itself unsettles her. “In the centre it’s mostly white, pretentious. I get weird looks all the time. In my suburb it’s mostly Black. I want a mixture, not one or the other.”
She remembered a neighbour yelling at her for standing outside with an Uber Eats order. “I said, but I live here. From that day, I wanted to leave.”
Clara wants her own space. “I hate living with people. They drain my energy. Unless everyone is on the same level, it’s exhausting.” She tapped the messy table as if to underline it. “I want this, but without roommates.”
She softened for a moment. “Sometimes people give me energy. Sometimes they kill it. It’s rare to find the right balance. Here, it works. But I’ve lived in houses where you don’t even know who’s down the hall. That’s crazy.”
Music, Tears, and Too Much Feeling
A speaker buzzed faintly in the corner, music leaking into the room. Clara brightened. Samba in Brazil, she said, “heals your heart without you realising. The happiest and saddest moments together. It has soul.” She compared it to electronic music. “Audio touches people more than visuals. That’s why movies without sound don’t work. A lot of people cry with music. Almost nobody cries with a painting.”
She did. She still does. As a child she cried at gymnastics competitions when the music swelled. She cried seeing homeless people in Paris. “I felt everything too much. It was terrible. I didn’t understand why.”
Now she calls that same intensity a strength. “I became feminist early because I understood discrimination early. If I was born Black, Chinese, whatever — I’d be discriminated. So who isn’t? I saw that young. I didn’t want it for anyone.”
She gestured toward another half-finished canvas, colours still wet. “I don’t plan paintings. If you think too much, it doesn’t work. You just do it. Later you look back and see why.” She shrugged. “I love colours. Maybe they don’t even exist the way we think. That makes them even better.”
Listening to Clara talk about painting — “I don’t plan paintings. If you think too much, it doesn’t work. You just do it” — hit close to home. I’ve never cared much for technique either. Design demands rules because it has to function, but with photography, drawing, writing — it was never about skill. It was about emotion spilling out, an outlet I couldn’t always control. Portraits helped me face my social anxiety. Writing was survival. People say my photos catch something in the eyes, but really, it was me trying to see past my own.
These days I’m steadier in myself, and maybe that’s why it feels harder to create in the same way. Rules — in life and in art — can bring calm. But not everything, or everyone, fits calmness. Clara’s voice is a reminder of that — her work is proof that sometimes creativity is strongest when you let go, when you stop trying to control it, and just let it happen.
Everyone’s story is different. If you’d like to share yours, my inbox is always open.
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