The idea for this picture actually came to me a few months ago, and at that time I wasn't really sure about it. Much of the idea behind it was scattered and rough, and very much unpolished. I had been doing some study of Japanese Yaoi and wanted to take some of the influences of that style and add them to my own work. Yaoi tends to focus very much on the deeply romantic side of emotion and I have been wanting to explore a little more of that side of emotion within my own work. Many ideas came to my mind while brainstorming on ideas for my own piece... but I didn't want to go down any stereotypical rout of the genre, and I wanted it to still feel like my own work.
After doing a few sketches of romantically involved individuals, my mind began to wander down its typical darker path. I thought to myself, what if I created an image that appealed to more than just the heart warming emotion of love? What if I created an image that was both romantic and tragic in its own way? That was when the idea of "What Will Always Be Mine" started to take shape in my mind.
I set up the idea as two pirates who had fallen in love... and love, though being a beautiful thing, can be a painful bond as well. Ergo the tragedy of love... The two lovers could not be, and one utterly lost his heart to the other... and though they could not be, a bound between hearts is not easily broken. One pirate would steal the heart of the other as a reminder of what would always belong to him.
Though liking the idea to a degree, I didn't think it really set right in my mind. So it would remain as little more than a sketch for a good two and half months... when chance would have it that the idea was reinvented in my mind through a dream. A dream of a ghost...
I resketched the image with the new element of a ghost and was soon to be reinspired to create the image now completely in my own style.
The new idea behind the picture involved the two lovers now separated by death. The idea of the other lover being no more now than a ghost made the entire image feel more emotional in my mind. That one would have to go about life separated from his love now lost forever seemed bitterly tragic. The image is now of a ghost holding the still beating heart of his lover... but is it really that simple?
In my mind, symbolically, the ghost is not necessarily an actual ghost, but the ghost of love. If one pays close attention to the image, one will notice that the ghostly mist originates from the man's chest... meaning it could be a ghost, or it could also be a figment of the imagination... one of the heart's little pains reminding us of what we lost. It comes directly from the heart, as if the heart is projecting the pain.
Though the image is of a painful display... a ghost ripping out his still beating heart. The image is also sad and somewhat tender... The ghost is not really an antagonist... I wanted it to be a sad, yet touching display... as the one may note, the ghost is holding the man's hand, as if to comfort him though the pain.
The true antagonist of the picture is neither the man nor the ghost, but the heart... For it is the heart brings about the feelings... In the end, the ghost has come to take the heart that still belongs to him, to keep it for his own? or to help ease the pain the heart has caused him?
