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.
Playing with Watercolours: Postcards for Mum
Dear readers, There is a certain joy in finding something we thought we’d lost or had stolen, whether it be a watch or ring or CD or a book; something of great sentimental value and precious. We don’t know how or where we misplaced it, but it gives enormous guilt and grief and nerves. The relief in finding it is so intense that a smile wider than you thought your face could manage appears. Well, this is no such situation. I simply lifted some papers while doing some spring cleaning and I came across a little pad of postcards which I had been doing some watercolour paintings on in the mid months of 2023. It was a gift from my mother for the Christmas of 2022, a travel pack of watercolours, a wonderful tool for art therapy (see my blog post: Why Do I Doodle?). I knew it was there all along they were there, but I didn’t really know what to do with it. I don’t want to give myself a too loud pat on the back, but I’m kind of pleased with what came out of my rather inexperienced and primitive watercolour painting skills. They are of everything and nothing, some based on people I know, on the shades of night and Tegucigalpa, the smog created in 2023 by the forest fires which surround the city. The smog is still there in 2024. Some things never change, including the scattered papers in my room. One definite constant: my mother’s gift. Enjoy. I know that I enjoyed painting them, on the balcony of where I currently live, sometimes aided by a cup of rum, whiskey or beer, a social lubricant, as well as an artistic one. Intoxins: do your thing.
Musings from the Coast: Drawings of the Sea
Dear readers, I’ve never lived close to the sea. Not for any length of time anyway. I’ve always found myself in cities and places landlocked and/or at some distance from the coast. I’m not sure why. 44 years on this planet. I’m almost obsessed with it, with a giant tattoo on my upper right arm, based loosely on The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, which is also the cover of my current doodle book, a special gift from a special person. So what’s stopped me from moving to the coast? Life and career choices, I suppose. This personal goal hasn’t coincided with my career. It’s not a regret. There isn’t much point in that. It is what it is. But it is a goal I have. Bucket list stuff (as opposed to bucket and spade stuff: poor pun intended). To live by the sea. To have a home with sea breezes flowing through the windows, strolling on to the sand with the mass of blue before me. I see it there before me right now. I almost taste the salt in my mouth and feel the vibration of the crashing waves bounce up through me from my feet. I glare out in wonder and admiration at this big, beautiful force of nature before me, covering 71% of the Earth’s surface, 139 million miles2 or 361 million km2 of water, with a volume of approximately 1.37 billion km3. That’s a lot of H2O. It just has the added ingredient of dissolved salt, which accounts for 3.5% of the entire ocean mass. You do the maths if you want to know the total volume of salt in our seas. I’m just stealing these numbers from the web. In the morning, I would swim before work, then do the same in the evening. I then look up to the stars at night and lie mesmerised at the theatre before me: the universe. I would eat fresh fish at lunch and drink it down with coconut milk and/or pineapple juice. Quite a manifestation, isn’t it. It seems I have it all worked out. I plan on winning the lottery any day soon. See you in my beach house dreams. I know this isn’t an everyday reality for those who live by the coast, at least not for the majority. I’m not sure how people live their lives by the sea to be honest. I doubt it’s like the above. Hurricane and rip tide warnings. Sand flies that chomp through your flesh to the bone, jellyfish, sharks, snakes, sea crocodiles, pollution…the list goes on: all the cons of living by the sea. People I know who’ve moved to the coast from the city have told me that the novelty wears off pretty quickly. I’m crushing my own manifestation. I’m thinking of Honduras though. Those Caribbean beaches in the north. It’s Easter week and a sizable chunk of the population is flocking there as I write. I’m stuck in Tegucigalpa, about 5 hours south. Looking on with envy. But I wouldn’t want to go this week. Too many people. My moment will come again. I grew up in Birmingham in England, located probably at the furthest point from the coast in the country, the closest beach being Weston-Super-Mare which is two hours away, famous for the tide spending the majority of the time in the horizon so you don’t actually see the sea, and the sickly sweet rock, which wrecks teeth and your budget with dental bills. Preston, where I studied at university, is 20 miles from the seaside town Lytham St Annes, but as a penniless student without a car and dependent on public transport, beach trips were rare. The icy cold waters made swimming in it near impossible. Memories, though. I also lived in Madrid and Seville. The former was like Birmingham, far from the sea. The latter was closer, but not close enough. I spent a summer working in Calella de Palafrugell on the Costa Brava, a sleepy, picturesque town that used to be a fishing village. It was a 10 minute walk to the beach from where I resided and consisted of tiny coves where one could paddle or dive deep.. Every morning I would take a dip, or disappear on my few days off to the many little beaches close by and read Hemingway books while basking in the sun. The weeks went by swimmingly, pun intended, but a little too fast for my liking. Just two years ago I found a print of Calella while on a work trip in Barcelona, floating through the streets and galleries in Barrio Gótico, or Barri Gòtic in Catalan, by an artist I can’t remember the name of. It sits on my bedside table today, and you can find it to the left of this text. A small treasure that reminds me of those days at the coves. In Honduras, I reside in Tegucigalpa. It’s been my home for 14 years, although I often ask myself how I find myself in a country blessed with pristine beaches yet I live in a city nowhere near to any of them. It grates me, why? Seriously, why? Tegucigalpa isn’t the worst place in the world, but once you sample the beaches around Tela, La Ceiba and Trujillo, you wonder, what fuck are you doing here? You live once. Go, go, go. Tegus, as it is commonly known, is closer to the Pacific, just two hours or so away. The sun scorches and the water is murky with volcanic ash. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong; nice shrimp and shellfish, and there are mangroves and history on the island of Amapala. Yet, it struggles to compare with the North; the Caribbean vibe and turquoise waters, which feel warm and spiced and makes you feel you’re treading water in a relaxing tumbler of rum. Beach for the Brummies During the summer months, Birmingham City Council would lay out a fabricated beach close to Victoria Square outside
Shower Thoughts: Love and Hate
Dear readers, There are moments when we love to love and moments when we love to hate. Other moments when we hate to hate and then hate to love. Humans are complex beings. Emotions are complex to comprehend. A merry-go-round of confusion. Love and hate are two extremes that bring different colours to our eyes and chaos to our thoughts and hearts, triggering an assortment of behaviours that we sometimes struggle to understand, let alone others. The most mature and experienced minds can fall trap to it at any given moment, triggering a surge of energy and/or entangled thoughts. The triggered behaviours can bring great gifts or cause great harm to ourselves and others, sometimes intentionally, other times not. The heart. The soul. That intangible thing. Whatever you want to call it. It can be provoked and manipulated, again, by ourselves and others. Influenced by the words of others and/or impulsed by inflatuation, sexual throes and attraction that blindside us. There’s also the punch of our ego and vices and habits that auto-pilot us into tumultuous predicaments, a strange flow state where we don’t know where we’ve been and how we’ve ended up there. We just slept walked into something. There’s a moment we need to stop. Breathe. Untangle the knots. Let go. People. Humans. They affect our love and hate. They build you up and let you down, let you in and let you out, and you do the same to others. Again, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. It’s an inevitable part of life. People can be intrinsically great or instrincically awful, and carry out acts that demonstrate that inner goodness or badness, or sometimes unconsciously do bad things when they are good people, or good things when they are bad. People are just that way. Entrances and exits of beings in our lives. Sometimes with consent, sometimes with reluctance. Sometimes a connection evolves into something else, sometimes it is saying goodbye, having closure. Sometimes it doesn’t close the way we want or expect. Sometimes the goodbye comes without uttering or hearing the words, because you didn’t think it was the end at the time, or you didn’t get a chance to say adieu, for one reason or other. It’s about accepting. Again, it’s a time to let go. Letting go of love and hate, and finding the balance within, a flow state to an equilibrium within your emotions: it seems to be a path to happiness. I’m no expert; I’m just exploring my thoughts. But I feel our minds are wired that way. Obviously, self-love is the objective, rather than self-hate. But trying to find a love or hate in others to satisfy a love or a hole: that seems to be a toxic route we all follow at one stage or another in our lives. Some of us never learn. Managing such emotions is difficult for the most experienced of minds. Realize your triggers and treat yourselves and others with respect and harmony, and from there you can ride the waves of lives storms a little easier, with peace of mind. Where all this comes from is anyone’s guess: a test or calling from the spirits or a chemical reaction that swills somewhere within. You form your own opinion. You, the reader, and I, keep learning. The learning never ends. We absorb the lessons and tread carefully forward. Or at least, that’s what I do, and pass on what I learn to others. Now we have come to the end, we may never know what this post is really about. Maybe I’m untangling my own understanding of love and hate and emotion. Above all, these thoughts came to me while in the shower. Therefore, they are merely shower thoughts. An aqua-inspired flow state.
Doodle Playlist: Songs that Inspired Drawings
Dear readers, I love music, I love doodling, and as you may have seen from previous blog posts, I enjoy entwining the two, writing about songs that trigger and inspire me to draw my reflections out on my paper. Songs have given memories, sometimes there is a lyric that resonates that makes me think of something or someone. Sometimes they give me the blues, sometimes they make me feel fan-f—–g-tastic. [Note to readers: I’ve been warned about expletives and profanities by the moderators aka my mum. Please note the curse culling]. Call it fan art. Call it what you will. It is cathartic and therapeutic. You can read more on my joys of doodling in my previous blogpost, Why Do I Doodle? This post is more a playlist of songs and doodles, songs that have grabbed my imagination in one way or the other. You can find the compilation on Spotify at this link: Doodle Playlist. No more explanations. No more reflecting. Enjoy the gallery. Enjoy the Instagram reel. Enjoy the playlist. Love moi
The Phase of the Feline: Felis Catus
Dear readers, I’ve always loved cats. Those people who don’t like cats, I consider completely and utterly devoid of humour and personality. I struggle to comprehend someone who can’t appreciate a feline’s aloofness, nor love the way they fuck up from time-to-time, like misjudging a jump, but always gracefully landing on all fours. The way they swagger along fence tops with the arrogance of Eric Cantona, or stroll where they please over random pieces of furniture which to the humanoid thought is insane but to the cat brain is, “So the fuck what?”, a valuation the humanoid has to succumb to and accept because their inferiority and lower status in the hierarchy and food chain of life under the might of the fierce felis silvestris catus, also known as a “the common house cat”. One glare is enough to tell you that you’re just a worthless shit compared to their Lordship, and there’s nothing you can do about it except feed them and pet them – always only on their terms. They purr with such sensuality and smug charm, but you must always forget that this love is not a two way street: you may adore your moggy, but you are merely their humanoid slave. They police their territories with complete randomness: sometimes with a demonic prowl, other times complete and utter hueva – negligence. They sleep on window ledges, just centimetres away from a death drop, and they do so while sticking up a middle paw finger to the grim reaper, with the purred meows of “take your best shot. I’ve eight more lives.” Their fur balls give you allergic reactions and a sharp swipe of the claws at your toes first thing in the morning stings like a bitch, yet it’ll put a painful spring in your step for all. They catch rodents and gift their carcasses on a pillow in Godfather style, while decimating the local bird wildlife populations, “just because we want to”, then toying with the poor creature until its last breath, again, “just because we want to”. The randomness of their cruelty is slightly psychopathic by humanoid standards, yet it has been the muse and inspiration of many thousands of hours of video reels on social media. Have you ever asked yourself how many hours you have misspent going down cat video rabbit holes on YouTube? Or is it just me? Maybe it’s just a question for myself and my procrastinating tendencies. But fuck, I do love feline narcissism. I return to the point in the first paragraph, if you can’t appreciate a cat’s traits, you a really are a humourless eejit, aren’t you. And if you dislike them due to superstition, then I really think you don’t have the mental capacity to vote either. Cats are sinners and they don’t care, nor do they give a fuck about not going to heaven. They’re already living in one. I love dogs too. I love all animals. They talk more sense than most humanoids I know [note to reader: yes, I could well be talking about YOU], and they don’t even say a word. Well, apart from parrots. But let’s get back to felines. I used to have two cats. Not at the same time. They were family cats. Saying that, no humanoid truly owns a cat. As the cliché goes, they own you. So let me start again, my family and I were owned by two cats over two different periods. The first was named Oscar, with beautiful light brown, beige and black stripes to help camouflage himself in the foliages of Southam Road, sporting the genetics of a Welsh feral cat and a farm feline. Oscar had a wild glint in his eye, not a cat to be messed with, but beautiful to look at and admire. He attacked dogs and stalked foxes that entered his backyard, and sometimes came off worse when claws were thrown, but other cats in el barrio were petrified of him, which I must admit still today gives me an unhealthy feeling of pride. He was only with us for four years, before he perished after being hit by a car. The second cat was named Huey after the 80’s band Huey Lewis and the News in my mum’s eyes, but I tagged him after the lead singer and writer of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, a band I was listening a lot to at the time. We adopted him just a few weeks old from a rescue centre, a black and white moggy with asymmetrical markings on his face which always made him look a bit confused or inquisitive. Mum insisted he just wasn’t very bright, but I believed he was just pondering shit a bit too much, just shilly shallying over whether to nap, nip at your toes or eat. I can see my mum’s point though; when running down the stairs, he seemed to refuse to use his legs for the bottom few steps and just roll down. He was less of a hunter than Oscar (i.e. without doubt, his success rate was much lower and less ambitious, but it is an unfair comparison: Oscar had wild hunting genetics from a feral cat father and had better instincts than most cats, making Huey look distinctly average, which like comparing a Ferrari to Hyundai [note to self: you’re thinking about this way too much. Your readers don’t give a shit]) and was less bothered about protecting his territory. Other cats could randomly walk into the house and he would just look on witb a chilled expression. Huey was amazing at eating. He was obese and struggled to get through the cat flap or even jump onto sofas, which was both funny and sad to watch. This is where my mum underestimated Huey’s intelligence, or maybe more so, his greed. For some time, he would have his breakfast at home every morning, and then go to our neighbour and eat her cat’s food as well. We cottoned
Why Do I Doodle?
Dear readers, Doodles. Drawing. Art. Why do I do it, or attempt to do it? What is the point of it all? Why do any of us do anything? Why even breathe? Where are we? Point of life? Who knows. Seeing that I’ve diverged into pretentious, philosophical nonsense, I will now attempt to get back to the point (if there is one?), addressing the question of this blog post. I doodle. I love it. I do it all the time. Drawing. Or writing. If I have a pen, pencil, brush or mobile app in or at my fingertips, something to draw on, and an idle mind full of ludicrous inspiration, I am at my happiest. Letting the world and hours fly by and switching off my phone to all distractions. A coffee or tea close by is a nice luxury. The location of where I’m vomiting my imagination on paper isn’t much of a worry, unless I’m in an environment provoking motion sickness, and then I’m vomiting my last meal on the paper. Not a good thing. Unless you like vomit art. And if you are, please stop reading now and visit the dark web or wherever sedates your needs. You know who you are, even if we don’t. Spoiler alert: I don’t practise that kind of art. I also love the absurd. In art, novels and movies. The tens of thousands of thoughts we have every day. The vast majority of them are useless; we don’t practise upon them because of just that: they are absurd. But art enables us to do that: spew our thoughts out on paper [note to self: enough of the vomit analogies. I don’t know what’s got into you. It’s tiring your dear readers and beginning to sound like verbal diarrhoea. (Pun intended.)]. I have always enjoyed drawing or doodling, or painting. I don’t think I’ve ever been that great at it. I struggled to colour within the lines at school, causing much disdain among teachers (I justify it now by telling myself that art shouldn’t be kept within the lines…I wish I’d had the wit at the time to tell the teachers just that, not that I hold any [much] resentment). Through constant practice, and I don’t want to bore you with the ‘practice makes perfect’ line, I’m proud of my improvement. Maybe it’s the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000-hour rule to master an activity. Fuck knows which hour I’ve reached. I’m not counting. Who does when one’s enjoying themself? Just recently, I feel I’ve turned a corner. Not to blow my own trumpet. I’m not winning any prizes (yet!), and when I look at doodles and drawings in galleries or social media or Pinterest or by friends, I am astonished and inspired by the thought process and technique and style of the artist. It’s a constant learning process, like everything in life, but in a more profound way. Sometimes it is just a stream of consciousness and improvisation, being inspired by something I see and trying out styles and/or putting my own touch or narrative around it. Just finding out what I like, and fucking up with no pressure or remorse and succeeding now and then and being proud with what I produce, taking my foot of the pedal, so to speak. Self-teaching and finding a voice for everything. I love to see what comes out from an intangible idea created in a millisecond, to create a tangible work of art. The spark of it all. The burst of activity. This comes through all acts of creativity. But still, I love it. I guess I started something of an artistic journey two weeks after my father passed away. To the day, actually. Sunday 23rd October 2022. I found myself walking down the high street in Great Malvern with a fiver in my pocket. Not in note form, though; just coins and shrapnel. And if anyone knows anything about the UK or even spent 5 minutes there, they love change, and to make matters worse, the coins weigh a ton, even if it doesn’t come to that greater value. You need a belt to save your trousers or skirt dropping to your ankles. And don’t think that baggy trousers trend in the early 90s had anything to do with aesthetics or style; fuck no, the eejits just had too much change in their pockets. Which is where I found myself that morning, no doubt a grey morning considering the time of year. To be honest, I can’t remember if it was grey or even a morning. I just remember walking down the high street, trying to adjust to the death of my father and a cashless society. I felt the coins in my pocket and had a burning desire to part with them as quickly as possible, with an adequate rush of consumer thrill (more like dull thudding), while also trying to keep my jeans at waist height. I was toying with the idea of a sausage roll and/or Cadburys Chocolate. But then the book and craft shop, The Works, stood before me, so I stepped in to see what nonsense of a book I could buy and probably not bother to read. But, amongst all the Christmas shite that Santa had no doubt barfed up, there sat with halo around it was a little black sketch book; the colour pretty much reflecting how I was feeling around those days. I needed to fill it with whatever storm was brewing in my head. I picked it with some colour pencils and went to the till. The irony was, the two items came to over five pounds so I had to use my card anyway, and I was still left with the hunger to part with the fiver. Luckily my hunger for a sausage roll and Cadbury’s Chocolate had not departed, so I walked home with the thought of being slightly fatter and the potential urge to do something artistic. And it all sparked off