Bloody Orange Juice 50x40

“Bloody Orange Juice” 

Acrylic on canvas
50x40cm


Story of a return. Of an awakening.
Of a rebirth.

🟧 It’s a painting that strikes through its color, its light, its soft burn.
At first glance, one might see the joyful glow of a simple glass of orange juice; a symbol of innocence, of childhood, of a summer morning. That sweet, vibrant taste, still filled with light and memories. A juice once offered to children in the morning, when the world still felt safe. When everything was just beginning.

But this orange, here, bleeds.

🟥 Red streaks, like handprints, like the fingers of a wounded hand, run through this solar sea.
They’re no longer painful, not quite.
They are here like a physical memory of the past, a wound drying, a scream that has quieted.
The blood no longer flows, it tints.
It marks, it traces, it signifies.
It’s the story of an old pain, not erased, but integrated.
Like a wound, the blood has dried, letting the healing happen in its own time.

🟨 The background splits into several layers of consciousness.
The pale, almost pearly yellow floats like a veil between two worlds, the one before, and the one after.
It doesn’t hide. It protects.
It tells the story of healing, of distance gained, of self-respect reclaimed.
It is dawn, a new morning, an inner space purified, where light no longer hurts the eyes.
A turned page, a deep breath after a nightmare.

🟦 And then, in a corner, almost discreet but heavy with meaning, two small blue squares.
They are cold. Closed. Frozen.
They are the others.
Those she left behind.
Familiar faces who no longer recognize her.
People she drank with, laughed with, fell with.
But now, she refuses their Bloody Mary.
She asks for orange juice.

They laugh. Hesitate. Offer the glass like she’s a stranger.
They haven’t moved.
She grew. Without them.

The squares are small, because their world is small.
Squares, because they no longer step outside their own lines.
Blue, because they are frozen in the past, in forgetfulness, in the numbness of routine, in the forgetting of themselves.

—

The painting is a scene, a frozen memory:

“I came back.
But not to be the one you used to know.
I don’t drink to forget anymore.
I drink to remember never to forget myself again.

The sweet taste of orange juice reminds me of the child I once was,
the one who deserved love, gentleness, peace.
Today, it’s no longer a glass to dim the light.
It’s a glass to remind me that I made it through.

They find me ‘too calm’, ‘too serious’.
But they have no idea what it took for me to come back whole.
I no longer drink their poison.
I no longer need to be understood.
I understood myself.

I poured myself a glass of orange juice.
In it, there was blood.
Mine.
Healed.

I disappeared, for a time.
Not to run away. To save myself.

And when I came back,
no one really recognized me.
I no longer laughed at the same jokes.
I no longer raised the same glasses.

I am soft.
I am strong.
I am sober from everything that used to destroy me.

They handed me a glass of orange juice,
as a joke, or maybe a peace offering.
I took it.
Because I am somewhere else now.
I no longer need to be recognized.
I recognized myself, at last.”

- Lili Yaël Croquet