CREATE(S)
Many a journey travelled to have arrived at this point. My art speaks the story of me, a tale that has many layers and avenues. I am grateful to have arrived here, where I belong.
Tire yourself, and show your true colors
Emerging processed, expressive & transformative artist, I am an artist that have grown into visual expressionism through observation and inhabiting various art forms. Having trained as as an actor, then practicing as a physical theatre specialist, I matured into stage & creative directing, video production and project design. My journey took me to Dubai where I worked in the event sphere as production director and agency head. Thereafter I was fortunate enough to work with a Hollywood studio as director of operations and then later on Vice President, all the time pursuing my artistic endeavours through creative writing and photography. It was together with my 5 year old son that I stumbled on the paintbrush, acrylics and canvas plateau – encouraging him to express his creativity and nurture his growing imagination. I felt immediately at ease in the vibrational exude that is conveyed between alchemy of color, chaos of mind and impact of transcendent brush to a visual representation of molecular compounded thought processes. Something ethereal and at the same some visceral to be touched immediately. The impending nature to solidify what only previously existed in dreams. To say it; to try and translate it, is futile. For the moment you try to open your mouth, it evaporates. Creating in the moment, with the moment, I beg you and compare it to godliness. A superhero status of splatter and splendour. A peeling of scans and fractions of fractions from within the cavity of speculation and retrospective experience is autonomous healing of a spirit. A metaphysical splinter in a divine cosmos. An inter connectedness that weaves us all together. Splinter by splinter we fall at the handle of the axe we each hold as we tear ourselves down; for in isolation we rip each other apart. I insist that we are all born artists and have a natural tendency to CREATE.
My life has been inspired by many a filmmaker and ingénue, and there are countless auteur film makers, speculators, spectators, visual artist, Renaissance artists, in fact artists from all ages that have influenced my creative being. My vision is that of a ‘superconscious state of mind” – where we are all collectively intricately connected and co-dependent. I have studied Butoh (Japanese Expressionism Physical theatre) and my personal viewing of life is that we submerge into the depths of our souls and explore, like Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the underworld). We are at the epicentre of the turn-around point, from being sunken in murky waters. Our metaphysical heads momentarily turning towards the light above, and we begin to see the light of our conscious and where it can take us.. and we follow willingly. For we know no other way - unless, of course, we are ignorant, arrogant or suffer cowardice to face it vehemently (filled, of course, with a sense of pugnacious jealousy.)
My viewpoint affords me the luxury of an abstract mind, where I have always viewed this reality and time, we find ourselves in as tentative, we live in a constant flux of ebb and flow between harmonious glory and destructive self-annihilation. We strive to find the needlepoint balance of self-control, and vehemently imprison ourselves in a Rubik’s cube of infinite confusion and displacement. Where we continually shuffle the deck of cards, but the only triumphant victor emerging seems to be the joker. I say embrace the joker within, I say the victory is knowing you have exhausted yourself trying and I am reminded of an enlightened phrase by Tilda Swinton: “Drag yourself along a coarse stone. Leave any skin that is torn off. It is weak filth, and you are stronger for its absence.”
Experience everything but survive it. Or in words, far superior to my own: “If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it… if you’re doing for money or fame, don’t do it… If it’s hard work just thinking about doing it, don’t do it… Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness…don’t do it. When it is truly time, and you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. There is no other way, and there never was.” (Charles Bukowski)
We are all currency converters and the purpose of our life-giving energy, is to give it away freely in order to grow forth, in order to spread like mercury, the currency of vibrancy and energetically charged molecules in this vacuum of humanity. We are the nucleus, the power plant within. We attract what we strive for, we repulse what faints us but most importantly, like a river, we will flow in the direction of the whole energy, back to our essence and back to our ultimate creator, thy self.
This is the third eye perspective from which I open my creative child when I stand armoured with a brush, canvas and paints. I allow the energy to flow and the eye to observe the colors, motions and strokes. It is my spirit that collides with the canvas, a glimpse into me. My offering, be it humbly presented to you, is my coat of armour, I bear it like my family crest, my humility and humanity all at once.
Or at least : each of us creates our own beautiful chaos, in which we learn to flourish, we adapt our inner sanctum to that of the outside perspective. When our gaze should be solidly fixed introspectively and mirrored into a thousand million specks of dust. The trick is to train the eye, heart and mind to be aligned and to retrospectively procure what it excavates from within.
And if you allow me to borrow (and adapt) from Stanley Kubrick “If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.” My interpretation of this is; “If it can be imagined, felt or envisioned – it can be expressed.”
When I start painting I don’t know where light will take me or what I, non-selfishly, want to see - I give myself wholeheartedly and explicitly conjure the totality of the moment to color climax before me. I harness the power of epiphany to gently nudge the brush towards illumination. I surrender total control.
I want to sleep with my eyes open, I want to live in this non-sensory world of creation. I want to drink the mercury and die forever in a brush stroke. I CREATE