Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your

Host: The studio was bathed in late afternoon light, that golden, forgiving hour when everything — even chaos — looks divine. Paint-splattered walls glowed with the echo of color; unfinished canvases leaned against each other like sleeping thoughts. The smell of turpentine, linseed oil, and coffee gone cold filled the air — the scent of creation caught between frustration and joy.

Jack stood before an easel, a brush in hand, his shirt rolled to the elbows, streaked with accidental art — a man mid-battle with beauty itself. Across the room, Jeeny sat on the floor cross-legged, surrounded by sketches, tracing shadows across paper with a blunt charcoal stick.

Outside, through the high window, the sky was all amber and indigo, the kind of sky that seemed to whisper create while there’s still light.

Jeeny: “Pierre Bonnard once said, ‘Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.’”
She looked up from her sketch. “You think art’s still about pleasure, Jack? Or has it just become therapy for the restless?”

Jack: “Pleasure?” he said, smirking. “That’s a luxury. Most art I see these days bleeds before it breathes.”

Host: His voice carried the weariness of a man who’d seen too many masterpieces mistaken for confession.

Jeeny: “But isn’t that the point? Maybe pleasure doesn’t mean happiness. Maybe it’s the act of feeling deeply — of being alive enough to notice.”

Jack: “So pain’s a form of pleasure now?”

Jeeny: “In art, it always was. Bonnard wasn’t talking about comfort. He was talking about intensity. To express pleasure strongly is to love the world so fiercely it hurts.”

Host: The light shifted slightly, brushing gold across Jeeny’s face — her eyes alive with thought, her fingers stained black from charcoal.

Jack: “You make pleasure sound like worship.”

Jeeny: “It is. The good kind. The kind where you’re not worshiping perfection — just existence.”

Host: The brush in his hand paused midair. He looked at the blank space on the canvas — that terrifying, seductive void where creation begins.

Jack: “You know what I think?” he said. “I think Bonnard was reminding us to reclaim joy. Everyone wants to dissect pain, but nobody wants to celebrate delight without irony anymore. It’s like happiness became uncool.”

Jeeny: “Because pleasure demands vulnerability. It’s safer to analyze than to feel.”

Jack: “Yeah,” he said. “Safer — but emptier.”

Host: The room was silent except for the faint ticking of the wall clock and the sound of a brush dipping into color.

Jack: “You ever notice how people apologize for pleasure now?”

Jeeny: “Constantly,” she said. “As if joy needs justification. As if feeling good means you’ve stopped paying attention to suffering.”

Jack: “But pleasure isn’t ignorance. It’s defiance. It’s saying, ‘I know the world’s broken — but I’ll still find something beautiful to love in it.’”

Jeeny: “That’s what art does, doesn’t it? Turns survival into song.”

Host: The colors on his palette gleamed — ochre, crimson, ultramarine — like emotions waiting to be translated.

Jeeny watched him for a moment, her gaze softening. “You know, you paint like someone who’s afraid of pleasure.”

Jack: “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jeeny: “You hesitate at the good parts. You linger in the shadows, but you rush through the light.”

Jack: grinning faintly “Maybe I trust the shadows more.”

Jeeny: “Then you’re missing half the truth. Pleasure’s not decoration — it’s testimony.”

Host: Her words landed gently but deep. Jack stared at the brush in his hand like it had suddenly become a mirror.

Jack: “You really believe joy’s that serious?”

Jeeny: “Absolutely. You can’t fake it. And you can’t summon it by command. You have to live close enough to life to feel its pulse. That’s what Bonnard meant — draw your pleasure. Don’t copy it. Don’t theorize it. Draw it. Let it move through you.”

Jack: “You sound like a preacher.”

Jeeny: “I’m just tired of cynicism masquerading as intelligence.”

Host: The light outside dimmed further — the day dissolving into indigo, the last rays pooling on the canvas in front of him. The room took on that intimate quiet that lives right before revelation.

Jack lifted the brush again. “You know,” he said, “I’ve painted a hundred things in this room — but I don’t think I’ve ever painted joy.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe tonight’s the night.”

Jack: “And what if I don’t know what joy looks like anymore?”

Jeeny: “Then paint your longing for it. That’s a kind of pleasure too.”

Host: The brush touched the canvas — a single stroke, hesitant but alive. The sound was small, but it shifted the air. Jeeny leaned back, smiling.

Jeeny: “There. That’s it.”

Jack: “That’s what?”

Jeeny: “The moment pleasure begins — when creation stops being about control and starts being about surrender.”

Host: The silence in the room grew softer, warmer — not the absence of sound, but the fullness of presence.

Jack: “You think Bonnard knew that?”

Jeeny: “He lived that. He didn’t paint what he saw. He painted what he felt about seeing. That’s the difference.”

Jack: “Feeling about seeing,” he repeated, nodding. “That’s poetry.”

Jeeny: “No,” she said, smiling. “That’s pleasure.”

Host: The lightbulb flickered once, then steadied, casting a golden glow across both of them. Jack kept painting — slow, deliberate, a man rediscovering his own pulse through color.

Jeeny watched, her charcoal still for once, her expression peaceful.

Jeeny: “You know,” she said softly, “I think joy is the most rebellious emotion left. It takes courage to express it in a world addicted to sorrow.”

Jack: “Then maybe art is just rebellion disguised as gratitude.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The camera would linger on the painting now — still unfinished, still raw, but alive with something true. A burst of red where hesitation had been. A streak of yellow that didn’t ask permission to exist.

Outside, night arrived quietly, and the city began to hum again — lights flickering, lives continuing, beauty happening without announcement.

And in that quiet studio, Pierre Bonnard’s words floated like music, like command and confession both:

“Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.”

Because joy is not the absence of struggle —
it’s the art of feeling through it.

To create is to remember that pleasure
is not indulgence — it’s proof of life.

And when we draw it, paint it, express it,
we aren’t escaping the world —
we’re praising it,
one bold, trembling stroke at a time.