The painting here depicts some hot air balloons flying over mountains…onto infinity. This one has a special place in my heart since I made this during the Covid era when I, like most of healthcare givers, were overwhelmed with the havoc and loss of lives this virus spread. Work conditions were hard, battling helplessness was harder. Losing patients as well as near and dear ones was excruciating. 

Deeply moved by the circumstances, painting was one of the avenues that I used, to tackle stress and keep my sanity. This painting was conceptualised in such an epiphanous moment, as the hot air balloon seemed to mirror much of what life has in store. 

A hot air balloon cannot be steered. It follows the path of the wind and people in it must go along with the ride. The only control that you have is to rise up or come down. It provides an excellent metaphor for life. There is so much in life that we cannot control, much the same as we cannot control the direction of the wind and if we struggle against it we will only waste our energy. When we allow ourselves to surrender to the wind, we may notice the things around us in a different way. 

When we go up or down in the balloon, our perspectives change. The distance from which we look at something impacts our experience. Thus, even when we cannot control which direction the wind blows us, we can still choose to rise above the struggles of life, to see them from a distance. This gives us a bigger picture and often we can see things we couldn’t see before. We might notice other details or possibilities. When we create distance from our negative thoughts or feelings they don’t seem so big.

Symbolically, the balloon serves to release the emotions that are detrimental to one’s health; anger, sorrow, hatred, jealousy etc, that you are sending away from you for eternity.