I’ve never been good at endings. I’m not even good at beginnings. But there are voids so deep, so consuming, they end up marking both.
When I painted Irene, it wasn’t to remember. It was to make sure I never forgot that emptiness belonged to me too.
After my divorce, I moved to New York like someone choosing a city to rebuild herself—as if changing the ground beneath your feet could change your soul. I found an apartment with a friend, opened my first boutique back in Colombia, and for a moment, life felt like it had direction. It wasn’t perfect, but it had shape.
And then came the hurricane.
Her name was Irene.
When I walked into the apartment after the storm, everything was still there—the bed, the clothes, the books—but the moment you touched anything, it fell apart in your hands. Water had seeped into everything. It had risen from the floor, from the drains, like the house itself had cracked open and bled out.
And the strange thing is—it wasn’t rage. It wasn’t grief. It was nothing.
Like someone had erased me from myself.
All I had left was what I’d packed: a laptop, a camera, and a plane ticket. And a silence so heavy inside me, it felt like fatigue. My brain wasn’t equipped to be brave, or practical, or rational. I didn’t have the mind I have now—the one that can stare chaos in the face. Back then, the only thing I knew how to do was leave.
So I left. Thinking that if I changed places, maybe the pain would stay behind. That if I started over somewhere else, maybe the story would, too.
And that’s when the search began. Not for something. For me.
I was completely unmoored. Everything I’d once known, everything I thought I’d learned, it all vanished. Like the water hadn’t just taken my belongings—it had washed away my emotional memory.
That’s why I painted Irene. To hold the emptiness still for a moment. The black background is that void: shapeless, soundless, without a map. The blue in the eye is water—water that had always been part of my life, but this time didn’t heal or cleanse. This time it destroyed. The deep red on the lips, the stark white skin, the dark blue—those are the colors of the flag of the country where it all happened.
And even now, looking back, I wouldn’t undo it.
Not because it gave me “life lessons.” Not because it made me stronger or wiser. But because I know I was there. I know that emptiness was real. And I know that even though I didn’t handle it perfectly, I didn’t give up.
Sometimes life isn’t about pushing forward. Sometimes it’s just about surviving yourself.
Irene isn’t just a painting. She’s a version of me. One I no longer forget. Because when you lose everything, the only thing left is choice. What to reclaim. What to release. Who you want to become again.
And that’s when the next story begins.