The Scream

Can you imagine a sky on fire? Not with real fire, but with colors so bright they look like flames. That’s me. My sky is a swirl of fiery orange, blazing yellow, and deep red. Below all that color, there's a long, dark bridge that stretches over deep, wavy blue water. On my bridge, a person stands with their hands on their head, their mouth open wide like they are feeling something HUGE inside. It’s not a scary feeling, just a really, really big one. Two other people are walking away on the bridge, and they don't seem to notice the big, wobbly feeling in the air at all. I am not just a picture of a place. I am a painting of a feeling. And my name is The Scream.

The person who brought me to life was an artist named Edvard Munch. Edvard lived in a beautiful country called Norway, which has lots of mountains and water. He was a special kind of artist because he didn't just paint what he saw with his eyes; he painted what he felt in his heart. One evening, around the year 1893, he was taking a walk with his friends at sunset. Suddenly, the sky turned a blood-red color that shocked him. He wrote that it felt like a giant, silent scream was coming from all of nature. That big, wobbly feeling of worry filled him up from his toes to his head. He knew he had to capture that feeling right away. So, he grabbed a piece of cardboard—like the kind a box is made of—and got to work. He used wavy, wiggly lines to make everything look like it was moving and shaking. He used those bright, loud colors to show how strong the feeling was. He painted me quickly so he would never forget that powerful, shaky moment when the sky seemed to scream.

When people first saw me, some of them were a little puzzled. They said, "That doesn't look like a real sunset!" But soon, they started to understand. They realized I wasn't about a place; I was about a feeling everyone has sometimes. Have you ever felt so worried or lonely that you wanted to hold your head and shout? That’s the feeling I show. I became famous because I was honest about that big, messy feeling. It’s a feeling that doesn't have a happy face. Today, you might show a feeling like that with a special emoji on a phone. I am here to tell you that it's perfectly okay to have huge feelings. Art is a wonderful way to let those feelings out and share what's inside your heart. I help people realize they aren't the only ones who feel wobbly sometimes, connecting them all through a feeling that is part of being human.