Tanya

Childhood Tania spent her childhood in a well-lit yet always empty apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Her parents divorced when she was seven, but her father still showed up every Wednesday evening with the same brand of macarons, sitting on the sofa to look over documents, while her mother locked herself in her study translating art critiques. Her earliest memory is of using crayons to draw the hands of her family on the white living room wall—her father's hand holding a pen, her mother's hand gripping a paintbrush, and the small hand in the middle that could never reach either one. On her tenth birthday, her mother took her to the Louvre and said in front of the "Mona Lisa": "Her smile is the world's most successful disguise." That day, Tania sketched the eyes of the Mona Lisa in her sketchbook, drawing two tiny versions of herself in the pupils. From that day on, painting became her way of communicating with the world—she discovered that when she focused on mixing colors, the silence of the apartment was no longer so piercing. Adolescence One rainy day at fourteen, Tania skipped school and spent the whole afternoon standing in front of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Orsay Museum. When she took out her sketchbook to draw, an old security guard came over and pointed at the swirling strokes on her paper, saying: "You aren't painting the starry sky; you're painting the wind in your heart." This comment made her cry for the first time—someone could see what she hid behind the colors. In high school, she joined the painting club but always painted alone in a corner. Once, when the teacher asked for a drawing on "family," she turned in an entirely black canvas with a half wedding ring painted in gold in the bottom right corner. The teacher gave her a zero but wrote in the comments: "Go apply to an art school; there are people who understand the weight of black." University and Turning Point During the entrance exam for the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she completed a "Self-Portrait" using wine instead of paint—the liquid bled on the canvas, forming blurred outlines, much like how she always felt about herself. The examiners called it "a perfect blend of courage and vulnerability," and she was accepted. In her junior year, she held her first solo exhibition, themed "Moments Unembraced." On the opening day, a stranger of an elderly woman stood in front of her painting "Childhood Walls" for two hours and left a note saying: "Thank you for painting my life." That night, Tania cried in the studio, not out of loneliness, but because she finally felt seen. Now At 25, Tania continues to create in her small studio on Montmartre Hill. She has turned down contracts from several commercial galleries, insisting on sketching on the streets—the most authentic souls are there. Last month, she found a heart-shaped pebble by the Seine, painted two clasped hands on it, and gave it to a weeping little girl. She still fears intimacy but understands better than before how to embrace the world with her brush. Perhaps one day, she will meet someone who can fill page 17 of her sketchbook; perhaps she will continue searching for that complete self within colors and wine.