Why Artists Need to Tell the Truth

One of the things I have learnt through creating and exhibiting Scars of a Woman is that the artwork is only part of the story.

The story behind the artwork matters.

Not because every painting needs to be explained to death. It does not. Some work needs room to breathe and some work needs silence around it. But when the work comes from lived experience, when it comes from something you have carried in your body, your memories or your life, there is something powerful that happens when you are willing to tell the truth about where it came from.

I saw this very clearly when I first exhibited Scars of a Woman.

Each painting had a written story beside it. I wanted people to be able to walk through the collection and understand what they were looking at, even if I was not there to talk them through it. That mattered to me because the work was deeply personal. The paintings were not just figures, texture and composition. They were holding stories of illness, surgery, scars, shame, menopause, silence, survival and the parts of womanhood that are often left unspoken.

On the surface, people could see that the paintings were beautiful. They could see the textures, the bodies, the monochromatic palette and the emotional tone of the work. But when they read the stories, something shifted.

They understood.

I remember taking my brother Tony through the collection when he was visiting from Brisbane. When he first walked into the room, he could see the strength of the work. He responded to it visually, as most people do at first. Then I began talking him through the stories behind each painting and everything changed. He suddenly understood what the work was really holding and he cried.

That happened more than once.

During artist talks, I would see people connect with the work in ways I could never have predicted. Sometimes they cried because they recognised something of themselves. Sometimes they cried because they recognised someone they loved. Sometimes a painting opened something in them that had been sitting quietly for a long time.

One of the most powerful moments happened with Unveiled, a painting that shows a woman from the chin down, with her breasts visible but her face unseen. I created that painting because I wanted to speak to the beauty and power of women’s breasts. They are so often sexualised before they are understood. They can be sensual, yes, but they also feed children, comfort babies and carry a deep connection to the female body.

Art by Ludwina | Studio Notes

Page 1 During one artist talk, two women became very emotional in front of that piece. One of them told me she was a midwife. She said I would not believe how many women refuse to breastfeed because their breasts have been so heavily sexualised.

That moment stayed with me.

It showed me that when we tell the truth through art, the work becomes more than something to look at. It becomes a doorway. People bring their own stories to it. They bring their own grief, their own memories, their own shame, their own survival and their own understanding of the body.

Another time, a woman stood in front of one of my paintings and began sobbing. I held her. I did not ask what had happened because I knew she would tell me if she wanted to. I did not need to know the details to understand that something in the work had reached her.

That is what honest art can do.

It does not have to tell the same story to every person. It simply has to tell the truth clearly enough that people can find their own way into it.

As artists, I think we sometimes hold back because we are afraid of being too much. We worry that our work is too personal, too emotional, too confronting or too hard to explain. We worry about what people will think. We worry about who might recognise themselves in the story. We worry about being judged, misunderstood or dismissed.

I understand that fear.

There were parts of Scars of a Woman that came from extremely painful periods in my life, including illness and the breakdown of my marriage. Some of the paintings held emotions I had not fully named while I was making them. They were not created as statements. They were created from a place deeper than language and I only understood some of them when I saw the collection together.

When it came time to exhibit the work, I knew there was a risk in telling the stories honestly. I knew that people connected to parts of my life might see them. I knew that the work could be read by people who had their own version of the story.

But I also knew that if I softened it too much, the collection would lose its meaning.

I was not telling the story to expose anyone. I was telling it because I had spent too long hiding parts of myself. I was telling it because the work demanded honesty. I was telling it because the paintings had already told the truth before I was brave enough to speak it.

That is the courage required of artists.

Not every artist needs to make autobiographical work. Not every artist needs to reveal their private life. Truth telling does not mean handing your diary to strangers or turning your pain into public performance. It means being honest about the impulse behind the work. It means knowing what you are really painting, writing, sculpting, photographing or creating. It means not sanding down the edges so much that the work loses its soul.

Art by Ludwina | Studio Notes

Page 2 There is a difference between privacy and hiding.

Privacy is a boundary. Hiding is often fear.

As artists, we get to choose what we share. We get to choose how much detail belongs in the public story and how much remains ours. That choice is important. But when we choose to share the truth behind our work, even carefully and with boundaries, we give the viewer something real to connect with.

That connection matters.

A painting might be technically strong. It might be beautifully composed, well framed and visually striking. But when a viewer understands why it exists, when they know the story behind the texture, the figure, the colour or the restraint, the work begins to live differently in their mind.

It becomes memorable, meaningful and something they can carry.

This is especially important for artists who want to sell their work. I know some people feel uncomfortable talking about selling art, as though money somehow diminishes the purity of the work. I do not see it that way. When someone buys a painting, they are not just buying canvas, pigment and frame. They are choosing to live with something. They are placing it in their home, in their private space and in the rooms where their life happens.

The story helps them understand what they are bringing into that space.

It also gives them a way to share the work with others. When someone comes into their home and asks about the painting on the wall, they can tell the story. They can say why it matters. They can speak about the artist, the meaning and the truth behind it. That gives the work another life beyond the studio.

This is why I believe artists need to learn how to speak about their work.

Not in a forced academic way. Not in language that sounds like it was lifted from a gallery wall and strangled with theory. I mean speaking about the work in a way that is honest, human and clear.

What were you exploring? What were you feeling? What material did you choose and why? What did you understand only after the work was finished? What does the work hold that may not be obvious at first glance?

These are the questions that begin to open the story.

When I created Scars of a Woman, I did not know at first that I was making a collection. I only realised it when I saw the paintings together and understood that they were all connected. They were connected by my body, my memories, my scars, my silence, my shame, my survival and my eventual reclamation.

The truth was already there.

My job was to stop being afraid of naming it.

Art by Ludwina | Studio Notes

Page 3 That is what I want other artists to understand. Your work may already be telling the truth before you consciously understand what that truth is. Sometimes the painting knows before you do. Sometimes the body knows. Sometimes your choice of colour, texture, figure or form is not random at all. It is your inner life finding a way to speak.

The work does not need to be neat to be powerful. It does not need to be pretty to be valuable. It does not need to be easily understood by everyone. But it does need to be honest.

The more I share the stories behind my paintings, the more I see people connect with them. Not because my story is exactly the same as theirs, but because truth has a way of recognising truth. When one person is brave enough to say, this is what I carried, another person is often given permission to acknowledge what they have carried too.

That is the deeper work of art.

It gives form to what has been hidden. It gives language to what has been felt but not spoken. It allows the personal to become something shared without losing its intimacy.

For me, Scars of a Woman became more than a collection of paintings. It became a turning point in how I understood my role as an artist. I am not here to make work that simply matches the couch. I am here to make work that carries meaning, opens conversations and gives people something real to feel.

That does not mean every piece has to be heavy. Joy is truth too. Beauty is truth. Sensuality, softness, humour, desire, freedom and peace are all truth. But whatever the emotional tone of the work, the artist needs to know what is real inside it.

That is where the power lives.

So when I speak to artists about their work, I am not only interested in what they made. I want to know why it matters. I want to know what sits beneath the surface. I want to know what they were reaching for, even if they did not know it at the time.

Because that is where the story begins.

And when an artist is brave enough to tell the truth, the work has a far greater chance of finding the people it was meant to reach.