ManicWorld Magazine

-Your recent work has been reflecting children and a family does this reflect a change in your circumstances?

Yes it does, my creativity constantly requires me to broaden my techniques, subjects and contexts. It is such a moody and controlling feature.

-If so, do you usually strive to reflect your life onto the canvas?

Miller Miar wrote “rather than the usual sense that we have that we are one coherent self, we are actually all more like a ‘community of selves’ who have conversations with one another” and with that, yes, this career stems from the need to cope, initially it was supposed to be just a need for a child to cope, to be a barrier between the outside world and the internal worlds, but then it became an addictive psychological environment, mentor, friend, life made sense through the logic of a pencil line, the construction and deconstruction of information made more sense.

-Your paintings of people seem to capture the individual’s essence and aura rather than the physical form, why is that so?

I always had to be there for myself through the entire childhood, bullying, abuse from the neighbours and as much as my parents and older siblings helped. Somethings they could not handle directly so I think they trusted that I can handle the situation and I grew accustomed to handling external negativity, and when I failed grade 8, now that was an uncharted territory when I needed myself to step up and that was the first time I had to talk myself into accepting the situation and listen to myself. So in that phase, that’s where emotions like anger started to wear onto my personality like a second skin and I started to react physically to any form of disrespect, so those who always bullied me or abused me started to face down when they run into me. Just a staring in silence changed my situation but the stare wasn’t about them but it was me looking into an oblivion and wondering how what is my life amounting to, I wasn’t there psychologically but they saw all the expressions on my face and they started to step back. How staring into oblivion, how I saw myself wasn’t in my physical form but rather light blue silhouette of my will, and the community of silhouettes grew as I got to tertiary swing people based on their choices or strengths and determination or aspirations and so on, but it was only when I got the news that my best friend, the person who first befriended me, was poisoned and he died, that I saw the shattered silhouette of my will, it was so vulnerable and that’s where the artworks started to make sense.

-Do you consider art your therapy? How does it help you to express your self and your experiences?

I think I had covered this question unknowingly on the previous one, but yes it is, not only does it help with expressions and logic, but it helps me to gather information about the next person and be able to accept them for all general reasons. It was only when I had learned to hone the concept of construction and deconstruction that I was able to not only forgive my bullies but to appreciate them coming to me for help even though the plea for that help was violent. But I was happy that they got money, food and the capacity to take out their frustrations out and when I had learned that one of the bullies died from malnutrition and he didn’t have parents, but living with an extremely ill grandmother and they couldn’t afford basic necessities, I was sad, though later I started to appreciate him, happy I was able to help and that only happened because of the path of learning about art. I also started to feel like if I could’ve learnt it earlier maybe I would’ve been a maths genius, but that was taking it too far.