Paintings
Abstract Gestural Calligraphy
I used to pretend I can write in Chinese when I was little and show my 3rd grade peers, but I obviously didn't. I was just always really into the characters and calligraphy. So when I started to paint in 2014, this method came back to me, but in my own style. The more I did it, the more I dug deep into my families memories and records as to discover why. I then remembered my grandmother had a portrait of Sequoyah, the Cherokee silversmith who created the Cherokee alphabet, who happened to be her great uncle. Then a couple years later I discovered Babayin, the pre colonial Filipino writing system, through Bay Area artist Kristian Kabuay. Being half Filipino and a distant relative to Sequoyah I then realized why I have these gestural calligraphic strokes residing within me wanting to burst out and reconnect me with my history. It gave me a wonderful sense of self discovery.
I was laid off from a boutique fashion company in 2014, as their photographer, and I found this as the perfect opportunity to explore a different medium. I knew a lot about artist and painters from studying art history in college, but it wasn't until I watched The Radiant Child, the documentary about Basquiat, that really ushered my curiosity about painting for myself. Being of mixed heritage it was refreshing to see someone of color in the art world. I started off with painting my emotions on large rolls from photo backdrops and that allowed me to have broad gestural applications and text.
I then started implementing logo stencils with my gestural applications
This work is about consumerism, capitalism, society, advertising, branding, and hypocrisy- I am commenting on the bad it will do in the long run in comparison to the finite high they gives us in the short lives we have. I love our culture and the new gadgets, innovations, and products that come about and I purchase them knowingly that they negatively affect our health, our Earth’s ecosystem, and the worker’s lives that make these products. I am aware of my hypocrisy and how that in itself is a negative aspect and in relationship to my surroundings. I want everyone to be aware of these faults we’re contributing to and then maybe somehow through our understanding we will make better choices and change the way we conduct our businesses and decisions when it comes to the wants and instead focus on the needs in our personal lives and our culture.
About the paintings: I choose to work in black and white because I believe there are in essence only two sides of an idea, the good and the bad, the yin and the yang, the two forces that support one another in either harmonious relationships or in opposition. The logos represent that specific company and or industry and how I apply the paint- I let that describe the benefits of the industry and or company gained from their short cuts to optimizing their production through their use of exploitation of cheap labor, bad farming practices, and allowing waste to be dumped onto our Earth, to the fake news and to the gathering of our data.
Abstractions Continued
I feel the brush or marker tip and allow that to guide me in its graphic application to the surface. The wider the marker the more I like the application process and that allows me to create these shapes and lines that I fund so alluring. swipe through below
