I was getting frustrated at how much surface wasn’t covered up yet - so my goal was to cover most of it up as soon as possible and build upon that. I had no idea what I was doing, I was covering it with frantic brush strokes. I covered it, but I still hated it. It’s a shame because I felt like I really liked it in the beginning. I wonder. I took a short break where I looked through my old notes of random ideas, since I felt kind of stuck with where I was going with this painting. I came across “WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU KILLS YOU LATER” which I’d written along with other phrases. It just felt like it could fit with this painting rather perfectly - my mum fell severely ill in this house, I was a child (hence the cartoons, I guess - though I did pick them according to aesthetics as well) and she’s recovered a bit, but the pain is still there, threatening to come back, and it does still, when she works too much. That’s why I felt like this phrase fit this situation. When I think about it, it fits with quite a lot of things. The well-known phrase is “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” but thats an awfully optimistic view and rarely people have the strength to go on, and if they do, they’ve definitely grown weaker - though I’m disagreeing with myself as I type this - I’m constantly torn between being extremely optimistic or depressingly pessimistic. I guess “WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU KILLS YOU LATER!!!” is a comical warning to my future self, almost, kind of to the 11 year old who lived in that house experiencing the worst fear and anxiety of nearly losing a loved one. Olive, my roommate, said she knew someone who injured herself falling and ultimately that was what caused her death afterwards. That is quite a literal interpretation, but I am happy it is a phrase that can be ambiguous to some extent. I guess it is also kind of depressing… stating that even if this obstacle, this struggle doesn’t kill you now, it WILL ultimately be the cause of your death. It ties in with loss and grief of my family members, or the anxiety of it inevitably happening, as well as my own death in short years to come.
I think I real problem I am dealing with now and have always been dealing with is the color palette - I feel I definitely used too many colours in this painting and it looks off-putting. I just wish I could paint a serene scene sometimes. I am thinking of trying to limit my color palette, as I’ve heard a tutor say to someone before, it’s good experimentation. I might also use photoshop again to help me decide these colours. Recently I took photos from the studio/library windows when I stayed late because the sky was such a peculiar shade of purple. It felt so unnatural. Purple, black, white, kind of like an example Jack showed us in the cinematography workshop - how brands use colours as an identity - like cadbury chocolate or the iMovie logo. So artificial. This also reminded me of a piece of work I saw on instagram - his illustrations depict the exact melancholy I feel when I walk around the city. I wish I could capture that too in the future.
I was also thinking of trying some video experimentations - since I have so many videos I take of my surroundings anyway - and I’ve been inspired by Joan Jonas’ video work since last academic year anyway. I’ve recently been to two concerts, and am going to more soon, and I have a lot of blurry footage from when I couldn’t focus my camera… perhaps I could compile that together somehow ??? perhaps I even have blurry photos too. I suppose the blurriness could convey how fast life is and how many moments we forget as we live on. It is sad that you cannot hold on to everything. Humans are such fragile beings … we get contaminated by disease, we produce waste for the planet, we forget, we die… my grandpa, in his buddhist teachings, believe that life is just a cycle of being born, growing old, getting sick, and dying. So we shouldn’t have children, so we don’t pass on the life of suffering to them. He did have my mother though. I’m realizing I’ve been brought up in a really specific religion, yes, it is Buddhism but my grandpa is the leader of a major branch of it in taiwan. To be honest, I don’t understand it completely, since I’ve only been in that circle and learning all about this religion, which I completely believe in and want to get back into, as a child/young teenager. But I wholeheartedly believe that is the only true religion, everyone else’s is less valid. As an adult and witnessing other religions, I recall my mum saying everyone’s ‘God’ is actually the same, just depicted in different forms. Religion is a tough one because it encompasses all aspects of living, dying, everything we experience on earth. And, I guess, now that I’m thinking about the FEAR of losing someone to that cycle that we are born into, maybe it’s a good thing they’re leaving that suffering. But what the real suffering is - leaving the ones you loved, the ones you touched deeply in emotion, behind, crossing that relentless border. I think I’ve heard of stories of a man dying, actually experiencing hell itself, then returning, and telling the world all about the horrific scenes he saw. I believe it. The world we live in is crazy and sometimes I think about how wild it is that there is so little that we humans know about anything. There must be concepts I can’t even REMOTELY wrap my head around. and I find that void quite frightening. It is the Fear of the Unknown. It is that fear again. All in all, the religion I was brought up in (seems almost cult-like, not in a bad way, we all wore robes and people idolized my grandpa and I felt really strange about it) is impossibly pessimistic yet optimistic at the same time. Yes, life IS suffering, and it is SO extremely easy to fall into levels lower than human (there are some levels you can be in on earth that is closer to say, someone in hell) but buddha is also very kind and freeing to those who believe. I always feel a comfort and like someone has always been looking down and protecting me all this time. When the incident with my mum happened I was praying to buddha like mad and I think they heard me. She was ok again.
Anyway, I don’t want to get too deep into the religion, since I feel like I don’t know enough about it to say anything valid, since all the information I have is from childhood memories. I don’t know why, but just like affection for my family, I am reluctant to show interest in the religion in front of my family, I’m not sure if it’s cause my ‘silent’ image from childhood/teenager has not left my system or what. It’s stupid and childish but I’ve always had the problem of not being able to shake off the image that someone is used to seeing me in. For example, I stayed mute for the whole of my art classes after school because I didn’t talk much in the first lesson. So, when I meet a new person / group of people and I don’t talk a lot, I will never talk more than that, or it is very difficult for me to break out of it. Communication gives opportunity in life and I am sad I miss things like that sometimes. I don’t even know what I miss. Being selectively mute sometimes is like being trapped in an invisible box hard as steel, but padded with soft corners. It is hard to show emotion or say anything understandable. There was a girl in my elementary school who didn’t talk and it was common knowledge. Everyone knows she can talk, but she just doesn’t. She smiles a lot, but I didn’t understand why she was mute. I still don’t.
So, a lot to think about and I’m just processing all of this before jumping into any paintings. Kind of want to do some experimentations with photoshop again.
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| from tumblr - limited colour palette? |
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| from instagram. |