Lullus: A Five-Year-Old’s Painting That Taught Me Everything About Joy and Creation

The first painting I made had no title, no purpose, and no agenda -  and that’s exactly the point.

It captures something that has become incredibly hard for me to access: joy without motive. I wasn’t trying to make art. I wasn’t thinking about color, composition, or meaning. I just scooped thick blobs of paint onto a brush, then swung it fast through the air, watching the paint fly and splatter across the canvas. Red collided with yellow, blue dripped over green. I didn’t care where it landed. I didn’t edit or overthink. I stopped when I felt done. There was still space left, but I didn’t feel the need to fill it.

That’s what this piece is. A snapshot of instinct. No plan. No pressure. Just motion. Just joy.

Years later, while building Revelbloom, the platform behind SenecArt, I felt the opposite. I wasn’t crushed by the work itself. I was crushed by everything surrounding it. The energy spent explaining things that didn’t move the needle in my opinion too much. But the progress didn’t feel real. The validation was not enough. I never felt happy with progress. I could not appreciate the smallest success.

One day, I tried to break the loop. Not by learning something new or reading another book, but by going backwards. I went to my childhood room, pulled an old LEGO box from the shelf, and started building. Not to complete anything. Just to click bricks together. I sat on the floor, surrounded by pieces, snapping colors into each other without a plan. Slowly, my brain stopped racing. That was me, trying to find that same five-year-old joy again - not caring how it looked, not trying to finish, just creating to create.

Last week, I took a long look at this painting. And I remembered the day of its exhibition. My mom and siblings were there. I can’t remember the venue. Just flashes — standing in front of the canvas, sneaking looks to see if someone had marked it as sold. I think someone did. But of course, it was my mother. She paid 100 euros, as I later learned, and hung it in our home like it belonged next to the other artworks she and my father collected over the years. That gesture meant more than I understood at the time.

I don’t think I ever gave the painting a name. But when I saw it again last week, I knew what it would be: Lullus. That’s what my best friend Paul called me when we were kids. His version of Julius, back when he couldn’t pronounce it. So credit to him for the title. Credit to my mom for the early acquisition of this “masterpiece,” and for always offering shelter -even to the grown-up version of me, who sometimes forgets where he’s going, but still knows how to land.

And credit to that five-year-old me, for showing what it means to create without needing a reason, without trying to impress anyone, and without filling every corner just because you can.