Sometimes I think about why we do what we do and how far our actions are the result of things we decided to do freely. It looks what we do or plan to do are so much influenced by the past and the present happenings around us, that we almost could say we have no choice than to act like we acted.
When I was around 5 you can say, I drew a lot on the back side of big sheets of wallpaper catalog. I do not know where these catalogs came from but I was allowed to use as many sheets I wanted from these wall paper samples. It was on this light brown paper that I created big battlefields with everything up and on. Soldiers - alive, wounded or dead, aero planes, bunkers, shelters, cannons, machine guns everything was there.
Why was I so obsessed with drawing war and battlefields? I don’t have to look too far for the reason. I grew up with my maternal grandparents who went through the 1st and the 2nd world war, just like all the other people of their age. So every time we got some family visits, from sisters and brothers of my grandparents, there was a lot of discussion going about the war. They shared with each other all their experiences during those times and I was sitting there as 5 years old, listening with my two ears wide open. My maternal grandparents had no clue about art and there was nobody else interested in my creations. So I asked myself a question how far I made a free choice as a child to draw what I drew or had I not any say in this and did simply what was most logic?
For example, I believe that the urge to paint is born in me. My paternal grandmother painted but I have never seen her paint and it was also not talked about. I saw a painting I knew was painted by my grandmother but then I was already a teenager and therefore I could not have been influence by her. So my inner urge to draw and the stories I listened to, drove me to create war scenes on big sheets.