Art as Therapy

From Home

I inherited perfectionism from home. But in my case it didn't show up the way it's usually imagined — endlessly refining everything. With me it was the opposite: if something was going to turn out ugly or imperfect, I'd rather not start it at all.

I got frustrated when I made something that was only meant to lead to prettiness. The process itself — going through the stage where it's still unfinished, unpretty, uncertain — was unbearable to me. Tension.

I found solace in minimalism. Perfectionism is easier there — fewer elements, fewer things that can go wrong. The simpler, the safer. Back then I didn't call it an escape. I thought it was just my style.

Boring and Simple

In high school, I had my analog photography work shown at a competition. There was an exhibition. And I overheard two girls commenting on my photos:

"So boring. So simple."

That one sentence took root in me deeper than I realized at the time. I decided I would never exhibit again.

And I held to that for years. At art school they'd take my work for exhibitions — and I wouldn't go to them. When I finally had to present my master's thesis, I did it in the art school garden. Outside. Anything but in a hall, anything but head-on.

Today I know it wasn't an aesthetic choice. It was fear dressed up as a decision.

Black and Red

Procrastination, stress, "I have no idea," "everything sucks." I carried a lot of frustration inside me and it had to come out somewhere.

I remember a painting class where I simply threw everything out of myself. I painted expressively, my negative emotions, all in black and red. In the middle of it, a screaming figure appeared.

I hadn't planned it. It just ended up there. And it intrigued the professor — because you could see in that work what was really inside me.

That was the first time I saw something that would come back many times afterward: my state of mind showed in what I made. It couldn't be hidden behind technique. The state surfaced on its own.

One Museum in Every Country

Throughout my studies I traveled a lot. At some point I decided that in every country I'd visit at least one museum — to finally understand what this art thing was about. Because honestly: I didn't understand it. And I wanted to find my direction.

I kept stopping at modern art. After that I only went there — those exhibitions, those museums. It turned out that what really drew me in was conceptualism.

My master's thesis leaned heavily on that — on conceptualism and minimalism. There was a lot of me in it, emotion, depth. And yet to this day I feel as if it weren't enough. Not because it lacked content — but because I feel I didn't give 100% in the execution.

And here perfectionism comes in again. When you care too much, you don't allow yourself to experiment. Because after all, it has to look like something. It has to please. And that kills courage.

And Why Not, Actually

Throughout my studies I kept telling myself I wouldn't be an artist. At most a designer. It sounded safer.

But design is above all about working for someone. And at some point I thought: how am I supposed to make things for someone, when making things for myself already causes me so much pain?

In my fourth year — after several years of "fixing" myself — I arrived at a question I had been avoiding: why don't I actually want to be an artist? What's behind it?

I was in a place where it was handed to me on a plate. It was up to me whether I'd take it. I decided I'd at least try to imagine that maybe I could become one.

That's how I came across the book The Creative Act. I understood then how much of art rests on something like spirituality — on something you can't design or refine into being by force.

Scribbles

I decided to sign up for an elective in a subject I never would have taken: illustration. After all, you have to think creatively there, create, squeeze out of yourself that something I didn't understand — and I knew the professor had it. I kept wondering: what does he have that I don't? What does he see and understand that I don't?

Of course it landed right in the middle of my low point. Half of my work looked like one big depression. I was living off what I had inside — and that was exactly what showed.

The professor kept telling me not to go into my head, but to start paying attention to what surrounds me. My reaction was: what? After all, I have a need to be inside.

In time, those words reached me. I started looking for inspiration on the outside. And that's when illustration became my therapy for perfectionism. I had to draw something from within — and it sucked. Some scribbles, who knows what.

For the first time I started asking myself a question I'd never asked in creating: what actually excites me? Before, I was constantly focused on how others would perceive it. Showing those scribbles was a huge challenge for me.

And all the time the same thought: but I want it to be beautiful already. Now. What a piece of crap. How awful.

Step by Step

Finally I heard some simple words from someone on the outside. That it's a process, after all. Step by step.

"First things are never beautiful. There's no such possibility. Maybe it's ugly now — but with every next drawing it gets better."

That has stayed with me to this day. Sounds banal, doesn't it? And yet it was exactly what I had never been able to let myself understand my whole life: that an ugly beginning isn't a failure, just a stage.

I study psychology and now I know what to call it. This type of perfectionism — the avoidant kind, not the refining kind — is a fear of judgment dressed up as high standards. It's not about quality. It's about not being caught with something unfinished. And since everything starts out unfinished, the perfectionist simply… doesn't start.

That's Why Kickomi Came to Be

I say this with full conviction: if not for this, I wouldn't have started working on my own brand.

Because it would never be "the right moment." Something would always be missing, it would always be too early, too ugly, too unfinished. A perfectionist waits for perfect conditions that don't exist and never will.

And yet it's time that shapes things. Step by step. The first products, the first descriptions, the first TikToks, the first mistakes. None of it was perfect at the start. And that's exactly why it exists at all.

For me, Kickomi isn't just an art toy shop. It's proof that I learned to begin before it was ready. That I let that lesson from illustration pass through me and brought it into business.

And maybe that's why I take these little figures so seriously as art. Because I know how much courage it takes to show something that came out of someone's insides. Every art toy is someone's scribble that someone had the courage to finish.