…painting that is.

The assignment was to paint anything your heart desired. It was high school art class and we just finished basic technical lessons. This was the first time I bought my own canvas and acrylic paints feeling as if I had complete freedom. I sat at the dining room table and worked on this until my hand could not pick up that brush anymore.

At that moment in time I was inspired by Takashi Murakami and his super flat technique (see the resemblance?). The vibrant colors, the characters he created, the factory style way of production was so intriguing to me that I wanted to reach into my own imagination and form characters with their own quirky personalities.

It wasn’t long after that I went to the Ecstasy: In and About Altered States Exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in 2005 to see Takashi Murakami’s work in real life. This was my first contemporary art museum trip and it opened my eyes to so many other creative artists such as Glenn Brown, Olafur Eliasson, Tom Friedman, Jeppe Hein, Carsten Höller, Charles Ray and Erwin Redl.

After that first painting of these monsters, I wanted more. I wanted to see their personalities unravel. After my little creatures descended, they started to reek havoc in the world. I guess this was my way of letting out some tension of being tied up, figuratively speaking. These little things were my alter ego of destruction. It felt amazing to tell a story from my imagination running wild.

To let go and have people see what’s going on in this little brain of mine.