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Death and Lucidity

Theres this thing that happens when death comes closer – people seem to display a sense of lucidity that shakes you. As suddenly as it comes, fleeting, it passes by very quickly.  I have lost count of the number of times I have seen people display raw, real humanity when death comes close, a promise of change and potential of presence, only to disappear as quickly, in a flash of a text or a call…

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Talking Clouds

Thanks to rains giving it a break here, I could see the blues of today’s sky deepen as the evening progressed, with streaks of clouds traveling across from west to east. I especially love that part of the evening when the sky is just that perfect shade of blue for the clouds to glow in their pink hues. Today, as the sky got darker while I walked, I noticed stars twinkling away, blending in and…

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Lines of Boredom

I’d never actively sought out to practice drawing faces. For me, drawing anything has been either to record something that words cannot capture, or to express thoughts and feelings that reside and swirl as images in my mind. But many times they tend to come out as faces and it’s hard to ignore a face as it shows up and one must put it on paper. This one came in today as I was mulling over…

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Sketchbook Revival: Day Two

Sketchbook Revival: Day Two

Finally got around to this class (making stylised Zoom portraits) and made some impressions of some faces I have seen the most over Zoom in the past couple of years. As always, instead of the suggested materials of watercolour or acrylic and pencil colours, I ended up using ProMarkers and felt pens, just to test them out first and I do like it. Either way, yet another practice to play with.

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Loosening the Grip: Sketchbook Revival Opening Day

Loosening the Grip: Sketchbook Revival Opening Day

Usually a lot of text around life, life changes, transition, even navigating conflict seem to go the typical trope of challenge-climax-change, sort of talking metaphorically like change – the hard kind – happens in a flow as night turns to day. Well, if one were to zoom out of their lives, it might be and often seems to be so, but that night into day transition is rarely linear, predictable or…

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Remembering Pokhara

I was looking for something in my phone when I stumbled upon pictures from some time I’d spent in Pokhara. It’ll soon be 3 years since that trip which remains a strange and interesting mixed bag of time for me. More on that on another day perhaps. Tonight is in remembrance of the land surrounding the water in Pokhara. My brief time in this town was in itself the most eventful of the entire trip.…

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For a love starved world

It’s the last hour of 2021 and personally, it’s very interesting to me how vastly different the eve of a new year has been for me in the last couple of years – pandemic trauma and fatigue aside, it’s almost like the veneer coating of festivities has sort of worn out, revealing a much richer texture underneath it. I recently made a zine where I wrote a little about the ideas of love that I’ve…

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Solstice Mood

Luna with Sirius For the forever distracted self, the self that has intricately bound itself to noise so much, the idea of stillness can be more terrifying itself than what all it may reveal. But once there, one (hopefully) learns to notice and even revel in the preciousness of the tiniest bit of movement, even if all that moves is the chest as one breathes. With the longest night of the year…

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Metaphors Abound

The fogged up windows tonight serve as a metaphor for life at large – you can maybe see what’s on the other side, or maybe you cannot. You see it, but then you can’t fully claim seeing it. In moments of restlessness you want to wipe it off, see clearly what is. But once that itch passes and if you haven’t acted on it, the peace of acceptance descends on the heart. A slow pleasure meets the senses…

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The written word often evokes a sense of familiarity and belonging in my heart, that remains unique to the form, as much as it is elusive elsewhere. This is a line from ‘Swallowing Geography’ that I found today. This writer’s words seem to find me each time I find myself at the edge of a cliff, waiting for a bridge to magically appear, or for inner strength to surface, for me to leap ahead…

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Song for the night:

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The Untitled Drawing Club - Week One

The Untitled Drawing Club – Week One

I am joining in Alexis Winter’s The Untitled Drawing Club where each week, we take a virtual tour of a gallery or museum that Alexis would share and then create an artwork in response to the tour. This is my piece in response to visiting the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico last night! The single most important thing that stood out to me and I carry with myself is Kahlo’s unapologetic ownership of…

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Upturning

Imagine a world upside down, digital sketch, August 5, 2021. Just finished making this. The confidence to share something not necessarily in a standard form comes from reading someone’s comment today stating that the beauty of art often lies in the one engaging with it finding their own meaning. So, if you see this, feel free to make it your own and I will spare you what my intention is (besides…

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Writing & Value Judgments

Writing & Value Judgments

Broke out of my visual making block today. I have for, I fail and care not to recall how many, days been struggling to draw for pleasure. The more I like something, the more I find myself running scared from it because the mechanism of “I am going to ruin it” or “I cannot possibly do this justice” kicking in. So many times it has happened, I have begun making a comic / drawing something random,…

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Sounds of the Night

I’ve begun to fall in love with nightly sounds. I’ve always noticed them, the hum of some generator in the distance, a streetie who lives at the intersection, very dangerously if I may, the occasional chatty barks of 3 other dogs in 3 separate buildings creating an alternating current of sound, the sound of an occasional car complete with flashing and reflecting of its lights, the more regular…

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Working with Play

Doing my homework for tomorrow’s workshop on ‘play’ where we will make fan art based on Keith Haring’s work and my mind is blown. After Kusama, his is the only work that has spoken to me in ways that make me feel seen in expressing myself freely in my work. His works seem almost like portals or mandalas that snatch you into them and into the world that he was trying to create. I love his use of…

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Lunar Loon

Throughout different parts of my life, I have found the luminaries of the sky to be my anchors. While over time I have learnt how to find grounding with my feet firmly on the ground as well, just the presence of the sun and the moon, the certainty of their rising and setting, and rising again, whether fully visible or hiding behind layers of clouds, has been a my solid ground. The past month or…

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