I put key relationships I've had with people (and then some) into a blender and this is what I poured out ^^ Seona is a German artist I met in art class who specialises in hyper-realistic oil portraits and whom I somehow managed to stay in touch with after we both *got out of school*.
Recently I discovered she’s begun to explore relationships in her portraits, specifically those between old friends. It reminded me very much of Claudia, this other German artist who painted a picture of a friend of hers who (if I remember correctly) wasn’t her friend, anymore. I think I only saw that canvas of Claudia’s once but I never forgot it.
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So I’ve always been a fan of boredpanda~ not all of the content on there, you understand, but a whole huge hefty chunk of it ^_^ Not just for things like this ^o^ But understandably for things like this and this and this. Once in a while, I’m lucky enough to catch a video or two from them on Instagram. So you’ll understand when one day out of nowhere, as I mentioned last month, I’m over our one natural satellite because someone from boredpanda asks if they can interview me for an article. I was happy to oblige because it was something I had rather marked opinions about and that I’d written about before. You’ll understand again, I hope, when I tell you that I was happy to acquiesce to a request for an interview for a second article about delusional artists. The request came in the middle of the constant whitewater of my day-to-day about a week or so ago, but I couldn’t help answering on the spot. So lately (for heaven knows why) I’ve been boldly going (where no man has gone before) a whole lot. And there’s this scene in that episode full of those adorable furries where the chief engineer says ‘We’re big enough to take a few insults.’ Aren’t we? Especially when none was intended. ^^ Equuleus, 24 x 11.75" / 60.96 x 29.845 cm, Acrylic on Canvas, 2018 Back in a past life (as a copywriter), I’d heard tales of agencies that let their creatives play video games on office time. These agencies had a Playstation on the premises because they encouraged creative downtime.
I understand how it might be tough to rationalise creative downtime for the beancounters and human resource humans. Heck, I remember some of them had trouble enough understanding why the creatives (and some super trooper account execs) needed ‘flexitime’ to pull all-nighters to get ready for a pitch. Seriously though. Turns out there is a thing to what looks like (but doesn’t actually amount to) ‘slacking off’ in order to, enhance one’s creativity, and even productivity. I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about this ~ about how art isn’t just something they might do for fun, or as a hobby, but something they sort of have to do because, well, it makes them feel better.
I’m no psychology major or anything like that, and I’m not even going to pretend I’m any sort of qualified to talk about trauma or therapy and stuff. I guess what I’d like to go into in this jillablog post is how art has helped me to, you know. ‘Feel better’ or just get through, I suppose, whatever I needed to get through ~ some, unpleasantness or painful thing. I’m not sharing any secrets or sordid specifics or anything ~ just sharing some ways my ‘scribbling and bibbling’ has helped me, personally. Because you see at the outset I actually also had this idea of sharing a few suggestions for how you might do art as therapy, but you have to be certified and stuff to do that and I don’t want to do anything illegal or something. But maybe my own experiences might give you a glimpse of how it might be helpful in case you or someone you know is looking for something to, you know. Help you feel better ^_^ Sammy, Detail, Oil on canvas, 24 x 36” / 60.96 x 91.44 cm, ca 2003 The ‘sensitive artiste’ is a meme, almost, a trope, a joke ~ if I say something along the lines of ‘but it’s true, though’ ~ that just adds liquor to the flambé doesn’t it XD
But anyway, my objectives for writing this post are to maybe 1. Help you understand artists more If you’re not an artist (but have to live with one or more of them, or work with them, e.g. you’re an account manager at an ad agency and you have to deal with graphic designers) 2. Help you understand yourself or your fellow artists more if you are an artist (but somehow I get the feeling you already do anyway ^^; ) 3. Also maybe help myself / indulge in a little self-therapy (because now that some time has elapsed since I went in for some actual therapy, I now know that no one can help me, actually, except myself). Because in keeping with the recent trend on the jillablog, this post comes in the wake of what’s happened to me in the past few weeks since the last jillapost. Ja~in the words of J Worthington Foulfellow, ‘On to the theatre!’ XD First of a series illustrating a story told to me by a co-worker way back when, Oil pastel on paper, approximately 8 x 8” / 20.32 x 20.32 cm, ca 2005 Today, I was hanging out with my beloved cousin, my most beloved sister and my future brother-in-law, and we were having coffee at this fancy coffee place. They were connoisseurs, and me, I couldn't tell the difference between a bottled Starbucks frap and a five-buck 3-in-1 ^_^
Unlike aficionados like Junes, Bassints and Chito-kun, I regard coffee as a means to an end, not the end ^_^ JillA's BrillAs, Detail, 44.5 x 18" / 113.03 x 45.72 cm, Acrylic on Paper, 2017 Well, why do you think Vincent had his yellow house? (Guess he thought it was a good idea at the time, lol.)
Artists’ communities have been around for like, forever~speaking of Van Gogh, they say he didn’t much care for the one he left behind in Paris; point is, they were there. Come to think of it, I guess you could say all the movements were communities, which I’ll define rather loosely here as a bunch of like-minded artists hanging out and working together. Like the folks at St Ives, for instance. Of course, it’ll be a cold day in hell before we ever even begin to run out of artists’ communities over here: there’s the Saturday Group, the folks at Tam-Awan, pretty much everyone at Angono, Ang INK, and bajillions of others. I’ve never really been a ‘community’ type, so, this is a bit awkward for me to write, honestly. I’m thinking this was brought on following my first online co-working studio session with an artist based over in the States, which I felt compelled to document because I’d never really done anything like that before ^^; So in this post I’m just doing a little surface-level reflection on the importance of being part of an artists’ community, why I’ve never really been in one, and how being in one can really be a great idea. A guy in one of my favourite forever movies put an ad in the paper trying to put a band together. As soon as each prospective band member showed up at his door, he’d ask, ‘Who are your influences?’ I think only God is capable of creating from absolute scratch, and all of us have influences on our creative processes, many, if not most of which lie outside of the ‘art world’ itself. So I’m not here to talk about other artists (I already did that in my last post, lol) or movements, but the other things that might go into your ‘blender’, mainly by talking about what goes into mine. Shiraz, Detail, 20.4724 x 28.3465" / 52 x 72 cm, Acrylic on Paper, 2014 Because of current goings on in the jillalife, I find myself returning to a subject I touched on two years ago~ how art is, in fact, a real job. As in, if you were to reply to someone who might tell an artist to get a real job.
By ‘real job’, I mean the kind that you might go to an office for, own a company for, or, get paid regularly for, or what a lot of people might call a ‘day job’. |
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