According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai. To find it often requires deep enquiry and lengthy “search of self” – a search which is highly regarded.
The word ikigai, that space in the middle of these four elements
- What you Love (your passion) - What the World Needs (your mission) - What you are Good at (your vocation) - What you can get Paid for (your profession) -
is seen as the source of value or what make one’s life truly worthwhile.
My grandfather always said that I was born with a pencil in my hand. And it's true. When people ask me how long I’ve been painting I find myself unable to answer, because the truth is that I've always painted.
For as long as I can remember, everything was a canvas, every event was an excuse to express my art: the white walls of the elementary class that lacked a calendar; a friend's birthday; the local craft market; my notebook which contained only the month at the beginning of each chapter in words.
Painting. My biggest passion and my biggest frustration. As all great loves together we laughed, cried, screamed, rejoiced and trembled.
People often ask me, as a daughter of bankers, why be an artist, because it would be easier simply to have a "normal" job. My answer is always the same: because this is me. I could not describe myself differently.
Aristotle maintained, “We are what we repeatedly do, so excellence is not an act but a habit”.
Born under the sign of Sagittarius, my perennial desire for discovery and the search for great projects is accompanied by an innate note of optimism and an infinite stubbornness.
I realized that I was destined to paint before I even started doing this. Painting has grown with me; we have become adults together, like two train tracks that are destined never to be separated. From a passion when I was a little girl to a real profession from the first moment I put my feet out of the university and I had to confront the world of adults.
The (initial) decision to live and pursue an artistic life is typically filled with skepticism and derision. But it’s important to remember it’s also a process, filled with sacrifices and doubts. All these help fuel one’s perennial desire to succeed. First as a trainee in my teachers' atelier, a bit like everyone else when they start with this unfortunate idea of working in the art world; then as an emerging painter, loading the car full of paintings and forcing my skeptical but always supportive mother to follow me in the most varied bars and restaurants at beginning and fairs and exhibitions around Europe over time; and later founder of an art gallery in New York; as a new freelance artist, by choice, this time as an entrepreneur of myself. Every time I evolved and added something. The passion for art, however, is always the same, always intact, yet continuously enriched by a wealth of experiences.
It is said the vast majority of people do not like their work. Maybe they have not found their complete ikigai. For me, I feel I am among the "lucky" few who has always loved their work, despite struggling tooth and nail to carve out my own space.
Being able to create from a blank canvas something that did not exist before has always been like a magical power for me; a journey that fascinates me every single time. The fact someone can pick out any strong emotional feeling and understand my inner world until he or she decides to take home The Piece (i.e. a piece of me) is a miracle that will never cease to flatter me.
That’s the meaning of my personal ikigai, my reason to get up in the morning, my vein of madness to find a place in the world. Painting: my passion, my mission, my vocation and, I hope, my profession for the time being.
Ten years ago a person dear to me told me: "if you have a dream you have to protect it, if you want something go and follow it".
I don't know if I found the right formula to make my life come true, but I'm sure of one thing.
Looking back I know that I will be happy and proud because I fought for myself.
For my own personal search for happiness.
Chiara Del Vecchio