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Subversive art and acceptance
I visited the Tate Modern for the first time. When I saw Fountain, the famous urinal that was delivered as art, there was a tour guide in the room explaining why all the onlookers surrounded a urinal with a signature on it. Back in 1917, this kind of art would be baseless and off putting…
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Mired in making mistakes
Whoever said that we can make mistakes like how pencils have erasers didn’t use artist pencils. None of mine have erasers on them. I’ve been at the same sketch for at least 1 hour trying to take a photo reference and making elements from a painting that look like it. I did my usual gestural…
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Fear and Its Affect on Art
I’ve been learning to swim for over 10 years as an adult. It’s probably been engrained in me since I realized that people can drown as a child. I’ve slipped into the deep end both then and as an adult, and that sheer sense of panic comes to me immediately when I know I’m in…
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How to use social media effectively as an artist
I once attended a seminar regarding how to use social media effectively from a broader non-art perspective. Fundamentally, the basic is: 1) attend events, 2) take pictures, and 3) post. It sounds dumb but it’s true. The issue is how to make effective posts that are engaging. When I originally ventured into doing this, I…
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Art classes vs regular classes
I have taken many other academic classes before I started taking art classes. It was a dream to have been able to take classes at OCAD and other art classes. Definitely I miss not taking any this season while I’ve been busy doing other things. Here’s what I thought were very different from a usual…
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Secrets and their impact on us
I’ve been reading the Laws of Connection by David Robson, and Chapter 7 discussed about how secrets stop us from connecting with others. He discusses how his secret of being a gay man and how he could not be discovered because when young, he heard the tone of voice of a family member talking about…
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The qualms with pricing art and setting its values
Since 2023 I started selling my art. Long before then, there were times where people had asked me to buy some of my drawings. When I was young, I refused to have my art purchased by friends. Crafts were fine to be purchased; art could not be. In my child-mind, the act of purchasing art…
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How do we value art?
I reflected earlier this year that being “self-taught” means that it does not put me out of disadvantage. It’s strange, because I had always imagined that lacking the formal training would mean that my works would be less appreciated. I have not, for instance, spent years perfecting the art of making outlines and studying human…
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Anime art and its influences on my work
A story about how anime gave me a springboard to create my own art
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Exploring identity in art
For my upcoming show, I was choosing which pieces I wanted to include in my exhibit. I asked the artist community on Instagram, and one of the commenters, Corlett Crafts (check his work out, it’s great!), suggested that I pick my Malaysia art because of the recent movements of interest in “identity art”. This led…
