China

Just got back from Art Beijing today. Will be posting a lot of pictures shortly. Gallery M was the loudest, noisiest booth! Very excited about Beijing! I was so happy to come back to China after so many years, and in the very few days that I spent there just now it totally felt like home, and my "rusty" Chinese language skills have started to come back at the speed of "Matrix"-the-movie :)

Live

This is one of my favorite songs by Live called "Pain Lies on the Riverside"

I have forever, always tried
To stay clean and constantly baptized
I am aware now that the river's banks are dry
And to wait for a flood
Is to wait for life
I've got to learn to live until no end
But first I must learn to swim
All over again...

Angel

Another song that was listening to recently. Love it!

Dungeons and Dragons

Just something I was thinking about today...

If you truly love someone or something (be it a pet, your line of work, a person), you better be prepared to fight for your love. And it's not going to be quite like the old story book tells you: you go get a sword, then you go looking for the Dragon, then you fight the Dragon...

Sometimes the Dragon is within ourselves, and that makes it even a bigger challenge to fight, because in certain instances we can not separate our true "beingness" from "the Dragon".

But if you are afraid of the Dragon, and willing to give up the fight, doesn't it mean you are putting yourself (willfully) in your own private Dungeon (read "hell")?

An extraordinary passion, an extraordinary love deserves a good fight. If you give up on it, probably that means that you were given a gift by "the great gods" that you've never been worthy of in the first place? Or perhaps it is a test for you to prove that you have redeemed yourself (whatever the past issues were) and you now deserve of something extraordinary?...

We are the ones who pick our own Dungeons...
because we choose to ignore and feed the Dragons within...

Song of the Month

I totally fell in love with this song by Silversun Pickups!

Conditioning

Just a quick observation this bright and sunny Sunday morning.

It's very interesting how we are conditioned by society to play certain roles, which then nobody thoroughly explains, and so we walk around feeling lost and trapped.

From early on, most of the girls are brought up on fairy tales and imagine themselves as "princesses in white towers" waiting to be rescued. In reality, we don't even understand what we need to be rescued from and why.
Boys, on the contrary, are conditioned to be some sort of "knights in shining armor". But again, in real life, nobody has any desire to rescue anyone.
Why are we then knowingly setting ourselves up for this disastrous misunderstanding?...

"Inspiration"

This is one of the most recent works called "Inspiration (my wings)"; 48" x 36"; oil on canvas.

What is interesting about this piece that it that took almost 2 years to complete. It underwent so many transformations and alterations. And there was a time when I just put it side and concentrated on other work instead.

Then, sometime around mid to late February, right after I got back from Europe, I picked it up again, and something just clicked. I was inspired and kept working and working on it till I got to where I wanted it to be.

I called it "Inspiration" as my tribute to the great mystery of creative energy flow and being in that special "zone", channeling the power of creation.
Why it took 2 years to complete? What made me see it in a "different light" in February and just finish in 2 weeks? These are the great mysteries of inspiration...

The Blog

I just edited my "About Me" profile, and here's what I wrote:

"I am an exhibiting artist residing in Brooklyn, NY. But that says nothing about me, does it?
I try to be my just, to be who I am, to tell the TRUTH and to be strong enough to stand up to adversity, be it on a personal level or bigger scale of things."

Yes, gone are the days of doing what is "accepted". And that's not some sort of post-teenage phase, artist acting out. No, standing up for your own beliefs and naming black "black" is so simple, yet so many people find it impossibly difficult and prefer to hide behind the veil of "what my group of piers thinks". When you stand up and say no, I am not putting up with this, and as a matter of fact it is my Constitutional right to voice my opinion; for some reason, a lot of people get offended and gang up against you to try to "beat you down" to their conventional way of thinking. Is it because they are secretly wishing they had the courage to do the same? Is it because they are insecure and seeking out somebody else's approval?

And I am not talking about the "shock value". Just admitting and voicing out simple things. Why is it so difficult for us to accept that? Why are we always in a mindset of "us" vs. the "insignificant other", and what I mean by that is that we are not capable of feeling compassion towards somebody's pain until a similar experience touches our own lives, but by then it is too late because by then we have burnt all our bridges...

Life and personal growth, developing your mental fortitude and having the courage to speak your mind is one of the few things we as human race have at our possession. Isn't it time to be courageous and say the TRUTH?