let lemons be angry

 So on Saturday, I was sitting on the floor like this in a comfortable room at the substation, for minimart.

Not possessing any portable, stackable shelves or the like, I put up a clothesline to clip up my prints. I was later told it was a nice idea. 

I also painstakingly made sticker packs of some of the queerer characters in my sketchbook. There's k, me, huimin's head, and mgs schoolgirls.

Mostly, I teetered around the area talking to the artists. It's warming to speak with people whose daily concerns include knowing when to stop work on a painting, how to focus on street sketches, and how to package and frame art prints. 

A few of them were from the recent batch of fine art graduates at Lasalle. Including this guy, whose pencil drawings are subtly dark and surreal.

Then there was this girl, Ying Ying, a recent graduate from ADM!  We would both have chosen Fine Art if such a department had existed. Instead I went to visual communications to squeeze in illustration, and she went into interactive media to squeeze in sculpture. Whatever works!

And then there was this friend I made, Tony Chua, who really didn't belong with us startups and amateurs, but whose company and advice I much enjoyed.

 The only digital media piece that played all day, and honestly freaked some of us out a little because we weren't sure what subliminal messages were creeping through the graphics.

These lovely rorschach-like pattern cutouts had a metallic sheen that unfortunately doesn't show up in photographs. Also by a Lasalle graduate who had a very warm smile.

Intricate pencil drawings by Ashley Yeo-- I wish I could remember more names. I remember hers because I must have seen it in an events listing or another gallery.

 

I was also drawn to this corner, shared by three artist friends. I like the photograph on the far right, a lone chair stranded on a beach.

Also love this set of three pink paintings, which would match the pig painting on my wall. Not enough cash to buy the set of these, sadly.

Instead I bought ceramic flowers.

Another Lasalle graduate in the background, working on a sculpture. There is a rawness to the graduates' work, that although is raw, conveys their joyful enthusiasm at being able to create, to make, and I hope they don't lose it. His puppets have an eerie, lilting emotion in their eye sockets, and you can almost smell their death or sleep.

 

 

This Topknot guy has an interesting spraypainting technique that gives his work angst. He studies neuroscience, because "it explains the world and there are new discoveries everyday." I think it very important that artists are constantly learning things outside of the art field. How else will we have substance to create from?

Irene Febry makes these delicate collages out of torn paper. I was drawn to the pastels and frailty of each composition, but alas, forgot to buy the tiny bookmark.

These paintings were huge--more than a metre wide---and done by a giant of a guy from Lasalle. Some people reacted against the violence of the portrait below, but I love the violence of it. He paints movie scenes, and without knowing the context of the screenplay, you can estimate the emotional intensity of this scene by the force of his brushstrokes.

Also from Lasalle: this girl paints in little blotches and so creates a fuzzy ambient light in her paintings. I particularly like the one below, and would buy a print of it:

The last thing that caught my fancy: childlike paintings and prints that I wanted very much to put on my wall.

Especially this elephant.

There were other artists of course, including performance artists. Talking to customers and gallery owners also gave me a sense of what kind of drawings I should do more of. No more frittering away time on design jobs, or worse, youtube. I need to ride on this wave and start doing my best. I confess I never did my best in school, or rather, I never knew how to. But I'm old enough now, and bound by necessity.