Artistic Musings: A Journey of Self-Expression and Provocation

Dear readers,

I’m no philosopher, neither am I an expert on art theory. Just a disclaimer before I start this blog post.

My technical abilities in art are self-taught: trial and error. I know my limits but I love to break them and test myself. Sometimes great, sometimes child-like, I just enter a flow state and happily let the hours roll on by putting ink to paper in one form or another. I become a hermit and sit happily alone, finding out whatever it is I’m trying to say. Like stated in my blog post, Why Do I Doodle?, I do what I do to relax, for therapeutic and cathartic reasons. I’ve always enjoyed trying my hand at art, even if at times my hand coordination is not best. However, it became a constant habit after my dad passed and now it’s almost an addiction. I don’t try to be anything other than myself, which should be the case all the time, but art is my safe space to do just that: to open a lucid door in my mind and sit there for a while.

I don’t know if it’s all the time, but I always seem to have a message of some sort that I want to float to the surface. It’s usually flowing in the subconscious and I find out what I’m trying to say after I finish and see it on paper. Other times, I know what I want to say from the beginning and provoke a thought or feeling in the audience, get a reaction or a call to action, whether it is text or a drawing. I feel a bit weird and phoney about calling myself an artist, but I’m curious about whether other creators possess this calling to provoke or release, to make their audience feel something. Thought is free after all, both for the artist and the audience. Freedom of expression should be as free as freedom of interpretation, because once the artist has published whatever they publish, it belongs to the audience to interpret whatever they need or want from it. Sometimes it can feel a bit manipulative trying to provoke or sway thought, while at other times, my ego tells me it is a gift that comes within the art. A narrative, I suppose.

In a previous post, I shared a drawing based on a Friedrich Nietzsche quote, “No artist tolerates reality”. I love this phrase, because it enables artists to play with reality and sometimes enter the absurd, another love of mine. But I also love the idea of art, be it a portrait or a story, painting a certain reality that doesn’t sit well with the audience and makes them want to change the reality. Graffiti does that a lot. Controversial works. It’s healthy for societies and communities to see and read such endeavours, to evolve as one. You look at the past and see the game changers, in art, in people. It’s my critique of the woke movement, the section trying to whitewash works because it hurts feelings. Sometimes feelings were meant to be hurt as lessons have been learned. If we whitewash it, we lose what we learn, the mistakes made, and we go back to and commit the same errors.

Of course, we have to be careful of the person (or corporation) painting that reality, because those intentions can be irresponsible and have consequences that may be beneficial to certain people or groups. The news channels of course, who paint reality from opinion and then thresh it out to push an agenda, a narrative, a fictional reality, a distorted view of it, to a degree. Maybe we do that as artists at times. It makes it hard to interpret and judge who is right and wrong, who is the hero, who is the enemy, what and why is this being painted. Do we openly allow it or are fooled into it? It’s very subjective. Reality often depends on the eyes of the beholder, like beauty. There are many ways of seeing the same object. However, as mentioned above, no artist tolerates reality. In art it’s almost our role to distort it; in the news, it’s vice versa; to tell the closest to truth as can be.

I enjoy provocative art as much as I enjoy an innocent portrait of a landscape or emotion. I admire how the different art forms evolve, new mediums, platforms, narratives to say or tell our stories, be visual or musical. I enjoy the abstract and absurd. There are two in particular that I love and feel inspired by for different reasons entirely, one is Sergio Duce, aka Yo Runner, who does educational and thought provoking positive messages and observations based on societal values and flaws. The other is Joan Cornellà, completely polar opposite to Yo Runner, who is Catalan with a worldwide following, who makes hilariously cynical and dark observations, likewise, of society. He brings the devil out of me, as he might do out of you. Both have consistent styles in their art, one which I don’t yet have as such, but one that I’m working on called Anon. me, which I will share soon.

Over time, I have noticed myself, sometimes explicitly, using a mixture of words and drawings to provoke an emotion, be it joy, humour or affection. There might be sadness or questions for the audience. Sometimes I might be having a shit day or frustration, and I hear or read something that inspires me and helps me keep going, which may be useful to someone else. What I do is nothing out of the ordinary. I try to be responsible with my message. Sometimes it may be perverse. You have seen some in previous posts. You’ve been warned. You be the judge. You can see them below.

Leave a comment if you have a question or critique.