​I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that being a ‘starving artist’ is no longer a thing ~ unfortunately, it is, still for me LOL. And that’s something that’s been brought home to me this year more vividly than it ever has been in my long and uneventful life.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been for God, my dad, and my brother, I wouldn’t be writing this jillablog post now (or even have a website to post it on) at my desk in the lavish (for me) comfort of the jillahouse.

God willing, things will work out somehow, steadily, and soon ~ until I get all four feet back under me again.

But for now, I couldn’t help taking a quick and humorous look at what being a penniless painter has led me to do ~ even during the times I could actually afford to throw insane (for me) amounts of moolers away on paint and things. I guess I don’t have an Ilocano dad for nothing.

To be clear, I am grateful for having such a father because his prudence not only made it possible for me and my six siblings (and then some) to go to good schools, go on holidays overseas, take up music and martial arts and basically never have to work a day in our lives until we graduated.

It also gave us (or well most of us, anyway) the insane work ethic that made it possible for me to do what I’m doing now ~ which is basically work my hindquarters off so I can continue to create.

Anyway so you’ll understand (I hope) why I end up doing these weird things because where I come from, pesos (and paint) don’t grow on trees. (Doesn’t make these any less weird, though ^^)
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I sometimes wonder how painters from way back felt when photography was invented. They probably thought they’d be out of a job! Kind of like how a lot of us *creative* folks feel about AI, lol. Or wheelwrights when they invented cars or film camera humans when they made camera phones.

It’s just how it is, I guess. I mean if things like that didn’t happen we’d all still be digging holes whenever we needed to go to the jon or hitting the jungle for lunch (or something to wear).

That said, I’d like to say a few things about painting for memory. This does involve painting from memory, but I wanted to go into painting or drawing something to save it for a time when maybe our memory cells don’t work so well anymore. Or to save it for when things change so drastically that the thingy you’re saving isn’t likely to ever for never no matter what forever happen again.

So that when you look at the painting, you remember ~ and maybe even relive it.

So I saw this basketball movie while I was sick in bed a week ago, and in it I saw this coach tell the baller he was training that he had to learn to deal with trash talk. More specifically, he had to learn how to not let trash talk get to him and still be able to play the game.
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It wasn’t easy, to say the least ~ you wouldn’t believe what the poor guy had to listen to. Of course he gave it to the trash talker, and of course everyone shook their heads and said tsk, tsk, couldn’t handle it. Poor guy got ejected from the game and of course the trash talker had a huge stupid grin.

You might think this was weird, but I’ve always been able to draw some sort of parallel between art and sports ~ but never more than about a week ago when I found myself watching this film.

Because there is a lot of trash talk aimed at artists ~ or well at least, I’ve heard my share. And the sad thing is, sometimes it’s from your fellow artists ~ just like how the basketball players in the movie were trash talking their colleagues.

But see, like that baller in the movie, we really just need to learn to ignore those j**k ****s and focus on our practice.

Buuut I guess we’re only mortal (if not human), so I guess we (or okay fine, I) can’t help but vent sometimes. And I guess I’m sharing this to let you know that if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of trash along the lines of the following, you’re not alone and ~ here’s my nail-studded baseball bat. (Just. Kidding.)
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You know how you have bad hair days sometimes? Me, sometimes I have “bad drawing days” ~ I can’t draw a bloody thing x nothing I draw looks right x everything I draw looks like a bad tattoo or one of those “delusional artist” pieces.

What do you do when you’re in a slump? 

I’m writing about this now because well, I’m kind of in the middle of one, so I guess I couldn’t help noticing a couple of other artists I know who’ve been in a slump recently, too.

So in this post I thought I’d go into what a slump is, exactly, for artists ~ what happens during a slump, what causes it to happen, and more importantly, what to do if and when you’re in one.
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​Not too long ago, I’d been getting enquiries about my work on paper ~ not the first of their kind in my somewhat long and modest practice.

Reminds me of when a famous artist back here once told me that if I wanted to be ‘taken seriously’ by collectors, I shouldn’t do work on paper. This was back in 2021, so I had already been practising for some time (and the funny thing was, I wasn’t even asking for his advice lol).

Throughout the years, I’ve understood how many collectors ~ in my corner of the planet, at least ~ tend to avoid works on paper. Many collectors regard art as an investment, and if diamonds are forever, so is a marble statue or say, an oil painting on canvas.

And because these collectors are pretty much the hand that feeds for many artists, if the collectors don’t want art on paper, then…  Anyway I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole; a Jedi’s gotta do what a Jedi’s gotta do to pay the bills.

But I would like to spend this month’s post on putting my insignificant word in for works on paper ~ and not just because a hefty chunk of my own work is. It’s just, if you’re a buyer or collector or, maybe have a certain opinion about work on paper (that you may not even know you have), I’m hoping to maybe get you to start thinking differently.

Here are the usual five main gripes I hear about work on paper and corresponding ‘counter-reasons’ for each of them.

I know I’m not the best artist, so to me it makes sense to ask for a little help every time I make something. Every time I do, I’m reminded of how Salieri (in that Wolfie movie, anyway) used to beg God to help him compose. Well, we all know what Salieri was ‘patron saint’ of, lol ~ so for me to do pretty much the same thing makes sense, too.

In any case, with Holy Week coming up as I write this, I thought I might share the patron saints I pray to for help as a sort of tiny x lame expression of thanks. Left on my own I doubt I would ever have been able to make anything good. If I mess things up x the work’s not up to scratch, that’s on me (I confess I can’t say I pray very attentively to them like 100% of the time) ^^;

Since I’m lazy, much of the information here comes from our good (albeit not entirely reliable) friend Wikipedia and my own memory (which is arguably even more unreliable ^o^) unless otherwise stated.

If I had a nickel for every time I ever heard someone mention storytelling vis-à-vis marketing (or leadership or business, education or whatever), I’d be the Count of Monte Cristo (or well Elon Musk I guess in this reality, lol).

Yet there’s something to be said for storytelling in art; personally I’ve always believed that every piece of art, regardless of format ~ painting or sculpture, music or whatever ~ says something ~ even if the artist didn’t really mean to.

Lately I’ve been hearing quite a bit about this or that artist having the potential to “grow”. What does that even mean, anyway? That said, it made me wonder whether I’ve grown as an artist myself.

Take the case of this one artist, who I don’t know personally. (Forgive me if you’ve heard this one.) I was speaking to a certain gallery manager (who was also an artist) not too long ago, and this manager was telling me about how this particular artist seemed to be fixated on a certain insect.
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The thing about paintings~mine for me, anyway~is how they remind me of what was going on with me at the time I was painting them. Unfortunately, that’s not always a good thing, but like *Sir Ulrich* said, we need to ‘take the bad with the good’ ☺️

I find it amazing how they remind me of things more vividly than any photo or journal or anything~the same goes for drawings or doodles in my notebooks. It’s a little bit scary, that way, and sometimes when I make things I wonder what the thing I’m making will remind me of, one day. With my luck, it’ll be everything, lol.

Anyway that’s what crossed my mind very recently when this nice new gallery very kindly invited me to join their opening exhibit. Being large, the gallery needed works of a size to match, and they needed them in a relative hurry.

Even if I chugged all the silver and blue cans in the world, there was no way I was going to be able to finish even one piece that I’d be able to live with showing in public.

Long story short, they’ve agreed to take on some pieces I did a whopping 16 years ago, and they’re asking me for a write up to go with them. So I figured I’d murder two avians with a single concretion and share the lowdown on the works from this old Romp with you.

​Last year I was in a group show called Breaking Barriers, to which I submitted the painting above (rather unimaginatively titled Breaking Tikbalang). I remember I arrived rather early at the opening, feeling very awkward because I didn’t really know anybody else there.

So there I was, floating around like a lemon, looking at all the other works when one of the other artists came up to me and asked me which piece was mine. Jillamonsters have zero social skills, so, *stutter-stutter*~ so the kindly gentleman looked around, saw a Georgia O’Keefe-esque painting of a flower, and asked me if that was it.

He seemed kind of surprised when I pointed at the horsey above. ‘Whoa!’ he said, or something like. I didn’t know what that meant, but I gathered he didn’t figure me for the type who would paint something like that. Must’ve been the stutter or the skirt. Anyhow.

In preparing for this month’s post I did a little looking around (i.e. Googling) and saw there didn’t seem to be a whole lot about inferring the personality of artists from their work. Can’t say I researched very thoroughly, or anything, of course, but all I seemed to see was about the personality of collectors based on the paintings in their, well, collection 😅 (Here’s a quiz if you like.)

So everything else you read here is based on, well, how I read into a painting~for what it’s worth. I’m not a psychologist or an art historian or a detective 😊 or anything like that. I’m just someone who likes to get to know people (in a detached, third-party, outside-looking in kind of way 😅 ) who just happens to have an art degree and paints, too. And someone who’s obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, lol.

Just thought I’d share in case it helps people look at art or, enhance their experience or appreciation of it. I’m talking here, of course, about visual art, but it miiight be applicable in sooome way to other art forms, too.