I love how painting is Feyre's love language, it's something so personal and entwined with intimacy for her. Painting flames and flowers for nesta and elain was her way of showing her love and admiration for them because she didn't know how to communicate that in words. She feels dejected when they don't notice it and moves to cover it with her hand when nesta sneers at it because it's not just some paint for her! it's her extending a hand for her sisters to take.
The first step in feyre & tamlin's love story is when she let's him see her paintings that she'd kept locked in the gallery Β«There they were, all the wounds Iβd slowly been leeching these few months.Β» Gifting him one of the happier moments she painted--the pool of starlight--is basically her opening a part of herself for him and he rejects it and instead picks one of his chosing--dull snowy forest where she used to hunt--a painting that represented a very depressing part of her life that she never liked. I love the symbolism here.
For feyre colors and art were her only friends who helped her cope and see love and happiness in an otherwise a very loveless and unhappy life. A part of her dies when she stops seeing that love and only sees her fear and grief in them. The fact that the first time when she finally paints again after utm is at Starfall with rhysand, when she draws with starlight on rhysand's palm makes me sit down and cry. Rhysand bringing that part of feyre who saw joy in colors and art back to life, helping her see goodness in things that she had once loved and literally bringing her back from death is so beautiful. It makes me go insane.
