Before this page, I already had an established blog on Wordpress. I had spent the first trimester of my pregnancy enduring morning sickness and setting up said page with an online gallery and some posts about past works. Recently I went on and realised some type of Army Of the Twelve Monkeys hack-group had "claimed" my domain and thus virally wiped out my blog. This made me so sad. I couldn't tell you how long I would spend to write each blog post while going back and forth to the bathroom to barf because hormones.
Like WTF?
Anyway, I wanted to share a little bit about myself and why I do what I do. I don't call myself an artist. Why? IDK, maybe because I have neither been on some spiritual bush walk somewhere, nor exhibited in my local art gallery, nor have a publisher (do they have publishers? Gallerists? Managers?), nor have I had some famous dude buy my artwork. I'm just a mom, who can draw a proportional human anatomy, who had experience in the fashion industry, who is bored.
I do what I do because I want to create images that can make people relate to something personally. I remember reading for the first time Flight 741 To Sydney, the 22nd volume of Tintin's Adventures, and there were scenes where they had landed in Jakarta for refuelling. Immediately I recognized the colors and charm of the old Kemajoran airport in Jakarta. I have never been because this airport depicted is no longer in use, but the current international airport, Soekarno-Hatta Airport, is most probably modelled after this one, with the wooden beams, wooden mural carvings and tropical plants and all. It is my favorite volume of all Tintin's Adventures even though the scene lasted only a couple of pages, because I could relate to it personally as an Indonesian.
I was moulded by the fashion industry for the better part of my adult professional life. The combination of having to fight for your ideals and having it balanced for business success had a huge impact on me. I found myself producing collections of collections of personally meaningless articles of clothing that was purely for profit. When I started to finally produce collections that were back to my ideal standard, inspired by things I personally cherish, the economy coincidentally had taken a sharp turn. My collections suddenly became overpriced compared to items you can get from labels that dropship or outsource their stuff ready from China. This took a great hit to my ego, and business had to re-strategize and revert to an older module.
With my second baby due this summer, the world going up in flames over abortion rights, Brexit, and Game of Thrones, this past year I found consolation in creating artwork that is purely for the enjoyment of myself, my family, my friends and my audience. To be getting positive and negative feedback, and especially constructive criticism humbles me and takes me back to being a student. This makes me realize we are all in the process of being in the process itself.
My artwork isn't just limited to digital illustrations. I am a fashion designer anyway! With my restructured fashion label (check it out here!) still going strong on the side, I can't help but still tickle my fancy with textile prints, especially if they are encrusted with embellishments.
The moral of the story, I guess, is that I want to turn this boredom into a personal journey of taming my hubris, by reversing the act of disservice I have done to myself by servicing my audience with visuals they can personally relate to, instead of imposing my ideas like I have done before. Thank you again for following this thread, I promise my writing and my artwork will get better through time, just bear with me!
