Painting - My Opinion

I feel that painting is a personal experience, whether that is finding inspiration for the piece, choosing a memory, personal experience or whether it is simply using your imagination to come to a decision, a painting will always come from within. Whether that is how you are feeling having an influence on your work; for example i recall in 6th form not being very happy, not that i was depressed, but a recent personal worry made me feel low and i reached for the black paint; all my paintings were sad and dark. I was painting how i felt confused and depressed. It wasnt a deliberate act, maybe it was an unconscious reaction...
So whether this reaction comes from within, consciously or unconsciously, it is something which only the artist can decide on. Every mark, every detail, colour, subject, is their own decision (unless of course you have a commission).
Everytime i paint, i feel it is a unique experience, between me and the canvas, and sometimes i can sit and stare at a painting for hours wondering what it is doing to me, or simply to just decide where it needs to go next. I can be haunted sometimes by trying to decide what to do with the piece. For example, i recently painted my next door neighbour's children as a commission, and for days i sat and stared at the painting, it was like my own personal hell, trying to get their faces perfect and in proportion. Everytime i shut my eyes all i could see was the painting, like it was inscribed on the back of my eyelids.
You can get lost in a painting, in both creating one and looking at one. Painting it a personal experience, for both the artist and the viewers, it has the ability to affect us all differently and cause reactions and evoke feelings from all sides of the coin.
For my neighbours who were over the moon with their painting and cannot take their eyes off it, for me the artist who painted it, it was a torment which haunted me, i also couldnt take my eyes off it, but for a completely different reason.
Paintings can affect us all differently and with that example alone, im sure many others have experienced this also.
So there lies an example of what painting can do to you, i have found this using other mediums too but for me, and my own experience with painting, i like to paint a reality, i find it hard to paint what isn't there, or cannot be seen. Frida Kahlo once said "i paint my own reality - i paint what is real to me", something which i can really relate to.