creative process | devanakis

Close-up detail of the hands in the painting Tootsies

When Perspective Looks Like a Mistake

There is a particular kind of comment that returns again and again under one of my paintings. “This is AI.” “The hands are wrong.” “There are missing fingers.” It always sounds confident. And it is always wrong. Not because the comment is malicious, but because it reveals something more interesting than error. It reveals how rarely we are asked to truly look. The problem is not anatomy The painting in question, Tootsies , is figurative. Extremely so. There is no abstraction t

Michel

Feb 113 min read

Close-up detail of a young lady behind a veil

Why I Rarely Explain My Paintings

People often ask me, “What does it mean?”Sometimes they ask it with curiosity. Sometimes they ask it as if meaning were a label I forgot to attach. I understand the impulse. We live in an age of captions, summaries, and instant conclusions. We are trained to consume. Scroll and move on. Painting does not work like that. A painting is not a problem to solve. It is a space to enter.

Michel

Feb 104 min read

Genesis

For this piece, I found myself exploring Hindu cosmology, not from a place of religious practice, but from genuine fascination with its visual language. The intricate geometry, the balance between stillness and motion, the way each symbol carries layers of meaning. It offered a vocabulary that could hold what I wanted to express.

Michel

Oct 20, 20255 min read