I have painted plants, the sun and happy faces when I was a child. I did not know what pain and war was then. I grow up in country that is characterized by prolonged periods of dictator totalitarian regimes. I got to know about war in the south, a daily accumulation of pain. It was long scattered and not directly felt. It was the war in the beloved south Sudan. Like many artists in my generation we emerged as optimistic and strong youth. We resisted all that in our own way, we painted love and we painted pain. Painting to me was part of my daily life, it is like waking up and drinking my morning tea…. it was normal… if living in war is normal. A dialogue between the pain and paint started and intertwined. Painting was conscious emotions poured out in times of death, aggression and displacement and absence of freedom, it was pain visualized. It was expression in time when expression was denied.