Ok ok ok ok ok.
So before I became a painter. I was a writer. Yup. Writing was my thing since I was a teenager. I would write on foolscap paper, starting of novels and let a few friends at school read them. I had diaries ever since I can remember. Writing was my expressive emotional outlet. With writing, I loved song lyrics and music. And the way it could move a human being.
But visual art? Somehow or another, it just never clicked. But then again, I didn't have any artist friends or family growing up. And if you were good at art, it meant you were bad at your studies. You were not so smart, you ended up in the "Art stream" (Yes in Singapore, we were all streamed in whether we were Art, Science or Technical (the stupidest kids went there). Singapore, the country and city I grew up in, stigmatised everything. I only realise this now. How it was so important that we studied hard and went to university and got a good job with a good stable income, was of utmost important. No one ever thought becoming an artist was going to put food on the table. My parents never bought any art. We never went to any art galleries. The closest thing to art I ever brushed against was... nothing.
My first real brush with art was when I lived in Europe for a couple of years in my late twenties and we visited some museums. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Tate Modern in London, and of course, the Lourve in Paris. I got interested in art history. Because along the way into adulthood, I really got into anthropology, culture and history of the human species. And art was a great visual framework of which to study it. In my late twenties and early thirties, I became interested in spirituality, meaning of life, psychology and in my own life, I went out searching for belonging, meaning and purpose.
I studied yoga and became a yoga teacher while raising two babies in my 30s. We moved from the UK to Singapore, to Bali, back to Singapore and then to Australia. I taught yoga part time while trying to raise kids, keep the household in tact. Then the pandemic hit in 2020 and 2021, I sank into misery and depression as my kids and I were stuck at home here in Victoria for months, and my husband was stuck in Singapore, unable to fly back due to the airport closure in Melbourne and general entry restrictions in Australia.
And so, with a combination of becoming familiar with learning stuff online (I was doing lots of yoga / counselling type courses online at the start of the pandemic), my children's art supplies lying around, extreme desperation and bordom, I discovered the joy of painting loose florals in watercolour in the lock down of 2020. And haven't really stopped since.
So yeah. First art blog entry. Combining my love for writing & art. This will be the place for me to write all the stuff I feel in this journey. Things that inspire me. Things that perplex me. Things that I am curious about, unsure about, just raw, unedited rantings as I see fit.
I considered doing a podcast. Or a youtube channel. And maybe I will! But the therapeutic qualities of writing combined with the therapeutic qualities of painting. This is a no-brainer for me.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned till the next post.
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