recklessxiam

“Dear Self,

What have you been doing? So few rejections these past 3 months, a lot of things going in your head…You lost your job, it’s cuz the company got sued and went practically bankrupt, and so on and so forth. Found a job working with events and brand activation, yet another compromise to get some cash and prep up for the future. Things haven’t been any clearer in years. Go to a country where materials and living is cheap, and kick off that dream and create/paint fulltime and see how it goes. No, wait. Just go ahead and do it. You’ll get there. Kick it off. KICK IT OFF! JUMPSTART THAT CREATIVITY! BREATHE OUT THOSE IMAGES! Your head comes up with more and more, you need to create space for the new ones, better ones—-and breathe it all out to life! Like what the Magic Monkey said, “Carpet Them!”

Sincerely,

Self.”

I mentioned before that I have been working with newer oilpaintings. This one’s the first off the lot. The second one is underway. I’ve been doing other things in between these paintings, and I’ve been noting down ideas in my black book so I could create them when the time comes and I’m really free. These “other things” are mostly live small installations and photograph images, which are a few things I need to get out of myself. Materials here in Sg are small and a few, and things are really expensive that it prevents me from exploring. I am really looking forward to going back to the Philippines, take  off for a couple months or a year off work. It’s just something I have been ruminating for quite some time now, and the path has never been clearer. I know what I have to do, and it’s just an arm’s reach away, but it takes a lot of planning and a strong will, and I need to muster all that up to even make it. I must find a place to settle in, rent a studio, get my shit done and start working. I hope my monkey can come with me, imo, it’ll be great for him. There is NOTHING to shoot (photograph) in Sg, it’s all just buildings, and a facade, and one can only sincerely take photos of the cultural mix of people, and the elderly’s state in the present and other things, but nothing that’s truly socially-humanely striking. I really hope he thinks about it.

The thing I miss about the Philippines is that materials are everywhere. I used to create and stretch my own canvases—-go to the hardware warehouseshop, buy planks of wood, saw ‘em, dust ‘em, buy the canvas, stretch, and then prime it. There’s nothing like a feeling that one works for their own canvas. Even if I buy ready-made ones, it’s still cheap. Over here, the biggest canvas I could buy and actually pseudo-afford, is a 3’x3.5’ one, and it costs like SGD80!!! I dislike it very much, but I didn’t have a choice when I bought it. With that amount of cash, I could have bought 4 or more so canvases about the same size, and get to even treat a street person out for a lunch. I don’t wanna be de-sensitized to the world. Sure, Sg’s safe, but it’s TOO SAFE that people take safety and living at the moment sensitive to the world for GRANTED. I don’t want to be that person who doesn’t care about people I don’t know and yet need things more badly than I do.