12 Reasons Why We Create – Jordanian Artist Saba Al-Mahadin

Talking about a passion for the first time feels like talking about a first bicycle ride without training wheels, a first date, a first kiss, a first born; all the emotions bubbled inside burst out at the sight of a random question about what we do in life. We don’t worry ourselves about how the words come out or if we are clear enough; we are simply too excited to even notice others’ reactions because this is our moment of truth, our moment of joy, and our moment to say out loud: this is who I am and this is my chosen fuel.

I get asked often about what purpose art or words serve in my life. My answer is simple: they serve nothing but I made a choice to be of service to them and allow them to exist through me by giving them an open vessel and letting them explore my hidden corners, my untamed edges, and my untouched soul.  

For the creative mind, creation is not an aspiration but a quest to understand and be understood; by oneself first and by others second. It is a process than a journey where one needs to challenge oneself fearlessly. The struggle is not about finding or not finding the answer; it is more about having a mind that questions.

Creativity is an overrated concept. It is not something we have but it is more of a void that we want to fill with emotions that keep us afloat, make us break, leave us speechless and helpless, and feeds us that drop of water that quenches our thirst not only to keep us alive but also to make us breathe in life relentlessly.

Let’s take a look at the 12 reasons we choose to be creators:  

1. We create to allow others into our worlds in the hope they can teach us one or two things about ourselves when we fail to understand our lines or our strokes of brushes or even our persistence to keep on creating.
2. We create to escape the illusion of reality into a world where definitions of things are questionable and controversial till we decide to mould them unapologetically with the grandeur of our dreams and passions.
3. We create to connect with our dead-end heartbeats and faulty justifications to allow winds of change the opportunity to guide us to what we fear to unveil and encounter.
4. We create to bring together the seeds of intertwined contradictions that seem impossible for the still mind and the still eyes but fathomable to those who give room to the unfamiliar to surface and blend in with whatever narrative they choose to dance along with.
5. We create to dismiss the argument that life is what we make it and instead life is how, when and where we make it.
6. We create to allow curious eyes to be more attentive to the incoherence, the unexplainable, and the irrelevant entities in a setting where every detail, every shade, and every size matter in making the whole story imaginable, possible, and in some scenes doable. 
7. We create to bring people together and guide them through their individuality – people see art but each forms their own individual opinion about the creation; music, painting, crafts, and so on where there is no right or wrong and all interpretations are valued and respected).
8. We create to defeat our fears of stillness, to tame our confusion about oneness, and to shield our existence from numbness.
9. We create to give birth to a new rawness, a new imperfection, and a new apprehension of what was, what is and what could be in the midst of a chaos that seems random from the outside, but in reality it is a reflection of our surrender to the pace of living that is engraved in our minds and misinterpreted by our souls.
10. We create to make people not follow our story but to dive into what makes them humans towards objects and beings so that they learn that art can only be appreciated when they coexist with what they see and what they feel.  
11. We create what we think we see not what we hope to believe.
12. We create to make sure we still matter; to ourselves, to the context and to the world around.

What inspired the artwork?

This artwork was inspired by a conversation that took place on a train journey in Italy in 2018 between a lady and her teen granddaughter. The teen asked her grandmother about the secret of living a full life while remaining true to oneself despite whoever and whatever. The grandmother responded by saying that although everyone in this world lived, lives and will live as per the generation they belong to; however, one thing never changes: being deserving of a good and fulfilling life, if they choose to have one.

What the artwork means to me

We are all strangers till we exchange names, then the story takes a turn. We see an exterior that is still just like the distant blue sky on a hot summer day or the calm waters of an ocean that is welcoming the new seekers. We stare at each other as if we are trying to comprehend the unspoken and unveil the unfelt in a still photo, then comes the motion where each one of us releases the core of who we are. That stillness in the presence is but a shield that is hard enough to protect us but mellow enough to allow the raw curiosity kept inside, and at times fenced in, to ride the waves of liberation in a way that does not crush perceptions nor intimidates evolutions. It is in the contrast of our layers that we either remain or expand.

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Saba Al-Mahadin is an emerging artist from Jordan.  With an eye for details and a passionate curiosity, she has grown a thirst for exploring the mysteries of the world around and the vast interpretations life offers its living beings. Her journey has exposed her to different cultures where each corner, each human, and each space has a story to tell. As an artist and a writer, such stories hold a small part of the bigger picture and that is when her creativity drive has been triggered to go deeper and wider to express her thoughts unapologetically.

Her artwork is filled with bright colors and uneven shapes that aim at grabbing the viewers’ attention and asking them to take a minute to appreciate both sides of the stories without any prejudice. Be it a random brush stroke or uneven lines or unmatched color themes, life as a whole is of made of random entities that have their own voice but combined they make up an exceptional contrast that gives our existence the power to come alive.

You can find Saba on Instagram at @saba_tales and @myartsaba