Let us begin, then, at the beginning. Why do we paint?

When the first human dipped his hand into red clay and painted, with his finger, the outline of the antelope he had killed on his last hunt, perhaps he simply wanted to immortalize his success. Perhaps pride in defeating a mammoth compelled that primordial artist to place, on the wall, an image of his fellow tribesmen armed with spears. Or perhaps we underestimate his sense of beauty, his aesthetics, and his awe. Did those antelopes in the light of the setting sun look as beautiful as they tasted, torn apart with primitive teeth straight from the primitive grill? Our ancestor wanted to look at them and remember.

When man finally left his cozy den, looked around the world, and understood that something must have created this world and then taken care of keeping it in relative order, he decided to portray the creator so that he might feel less crushed and small. He looked at the wisest member of his group and, in his image, created the image of a deity. Later, his great-grandchildren painted hundreds more figures: holy, virtuous, and quite the opposite. Some were given wings, others horns, and through images, stories that had previously been told only around fires came to life.

When man grew tired of painting saints, he looked around and noticed that beauty was not found only in holiness. He arranged flowers, goblets, and skulls on tables, and then painted them amid cries that they looked just like life — even though, of course, they were dead. From his travels, he brought back images of the Orient and Africa, portraits of foreign peoples, animals, and views. He painted in order to show the world. To show another human being, even if that person was ugly but sufficiently wealthy.

When painting became a reportage of everyday life, an illustration of myths and beliefs, an iconography of history, and a survey of the flora and fauna of nearby forests and wetlands, the answer to the question of why we paint was obvious. There was simply no other way to show and preserve reality — or fairy tales. An artist who wanted to share his admiration for partridges in the snow was forced into the painstaking work of sitting over a canvas.

And then modernity arrived and ruined everything. Why do we paint if we can capture reality in HD photographs and 4K video? Why — or rather, what for — should anyone carry easels up to a ridge in the Tatras? All of this has already been documented in gigabytes of photographs, including images taken from passing satellites. Why paint a portrait if our phone can take hundreds of them in less time than it takes to unscrew a dried-up tube of paint? Not to mention likeness, which, as we know, can be a rather unpredictable matter in the world of painting. Is painting unnecessary? Unnecessary when it comes to representing the world as we see it?

We paint to show things that do not exist. We paint stories that cannot happen and places that are not there. Fantastic worlds, dreams, cosmoses beyond the reach of our telescopes, terrifying monsters from nightmares, and women with anatomy unseen before the age of extreme plastic surgery.

We paint to deform reality. To present it in a way no one else has shown it before. We tell the oldest known stories as if we were speaking of them for the first time. For humor, for emphasis, as a warning. Here, the camera alone is no longer enough. Here, one would have to alter the world as it is found. It is much cheaper to paint a tower tied into a knot than to actually build one.

We paint because painting is a craft, an artifact made by the wonderfully imperfect human hand — and sometimes even a foot! Burdened with the risk of error, chance, and failure, painting is proof that we can master the ability to create things, and that is already an almost divine quality.

We paint because we have to believe that each of us sees things differently. Things are what they are, and yet for each of us they are different. One only has to remember that there are people who bought a Fiat Multipla because of its shape. We paint because we want to show something important to us — or something completely insignificant, as long as it is ours — and so far no one has invented a better method than pigment on the tip of a finger and a cave wall.

We paint because we envy music its ability to move, amuse, and frighten so deeply. And so we paint shapes, stains, and colors so that they may play in our eyes. So that they may remain as an afterimage.

We paint because the very act of creation is deeply moving. Because we are responsible not only for pressing the camera shutter and placing strong faith in the talent of Japanese engineers. The moment we want to show is not fleeting. It must stay within us longer than 1/100 of a second. It may be an important moment. Usually it is, even if it is a banal one.