I painted this one in acrylic paints. Those little bit of paints left in the tubs in my classroom that no one wants to use. It made me feel very alive to be painting. I haven't painted in acrylic for years. I loved it. I think I will work with it more.
This boy "happened" from a chat with my student Rachel today. We were sitting together, she making some collage, me half-trying to paint and chatting with her.  After she left, and after everyone left, I went back to the room and worked on the image of the vague face that came about while I chatted with Rachel. It was very quiet in school when everyone has gone home. This is how Blue Boy With Red Ears came about.

I saw this boy yesterday on my way home. He was about 4, wearing a red sweater. I painted him from memory. I am learning to paint without looking at photos or references. Just my memory. It was very hard to do, and I am glad I tried.

I remember when I was in my first year in art school, I used to pick up discarded drawings by other students and then drew or painted over them. It was a sort of conversation I had with the images on the discards. Mostly I let the original images showed through, sometimes I covered them, really depending on what I felt and saw at that moment. Last week, I organised my pile of "discarded" drawings, which is something I always kept aside until the time is right to do something to them. I painted and drew over them. This could be the final stop for them, but maybe 2 weeks later I would work over them again. I don't know.  I am a big fan of recycling. Here are some to share with you.

it can take another man ( woman, in this case) to alter a man.
in the end, the man must remain his own man.

I don't wish I was pretty. I don't really wish. Wishes are like fishes. Slippery.

I ran into someone I knew from long ago, V. I first saw him when he was an amateur dancer and performer, and was struck by his beauty. Body like a big cat. Eyes hungry. We never talked much, as he seemed to be rather anti-social or shy. When we did talk, he didn't reveal himself. You get the feeling that he wasn't intentionally hiding, but that maybe he was just not that interesting a character. That he really didn't have anything very much to say to anyone.

So I ran into V. We actually "collided" in a rather narrow lane, that there was no other way than to really just stopped and talked. How are you, I asked. And from there you saw frustration oozed out from the whole 6 feet(maybe) of him. They refused to sell me a damn plastic bag, I was giving them 20 cents for it! He said about a shop-owner he just met, who, like most Singaporeans, do things by the rule book. He is angry with our country. So angry, that he is now living in Melbourne. He wants to do what he likes to do, and he doesn't like how he can't do that here. He said, just to perform here, you gotta go through so many channels, and then they will tell you that you can't do this here. Crap, man. I wonder what was it that he wanted to do that they didn't allow...?   But he also told me that he was going to perform at an expensive arts place, here, at the very place he was born, and which he hates, and which he is now a visitor, as he would fly back to Melbourne soon. He announced his upcoming performance to me like it was no big deal. But you knew it was a very huge deal to him, because that was the very first thing he told me when I asked him how he was, followed by the shop-owner refusing to give him his plastic bag. I looked at him, and I knew something is not right. He wants to do what he wants to do. I thought to myself.

I don't like it when some artists use it as an excuse for their lack ofimagination, creativity, or talent, or laziness. I don't like it when they start blaming others for their laziness. I don't like it when they think  that the country is not helping them, when they are in fact sucking all whatever they can from the arts council to do what they want to do, and they think it's not enough. And all they have is complaining and not creating anything interesting or original or sincere. They behave like such spoilt brats. And they gather in herds and pass poison to each other. All poison. No art.

V is not like that, in that he is really a loner. But his bitterness...and the way he runs away...he said that he feels so stifled here, and started passing judging statements to me when I told him I am teaching at a local art school. Everyone is teaching there. He said, bitingly.  In that fortress. All protected. He said it in a very sarcastic way. I got the feeling that he was saying that I am a coward, or a sell-out, and that he was the true artist or something. I was like, what's wrong with being a teacher? But I didn't say anything back. Are you still painting, he asked. Sure I am, but I did not have to report to him...since he was already forming all these judgements on me. So all I could do was just looked at him.

In order to do what he wants to do, he moved to a different place, and he is working manual labour so he can perform "to the whites who pay for it", as he said. Are you happy, I asked him. But he mumbled so much when he replied, eyes darting everywhere. I think I have already got the answer.

I met many others just like him. They bore me to hell. And all I want to do, is to go and play with the stray cats on the streets, look at the weeds growing from the sidewalk, dig my teeth into them durians, maybe have some Laksa or Mee Siam, come home, and paint.

I have been struggling to work, lately. Prior to that, I wasn't even struggling-I was lazy. But I started to paint. Again. Each time I paint, it's like I have not painted before, and I always don't know how to do it.

I looked at the paintings I made years ago. They were such clumsy attempts, but I am so glad I tried. Here is one, a portrait of my parents by the sea. This look exactly like them. :D

The truth is: I still care. But about different things. I don't care about the useless bitterness of people, whose self-pity turn me off.  I care about how the weeds spring up from just about anywhere, so pretty and full of life.

I care about getting his eyes right when I painted him. This is the late Lucian Freud, the man whose paintings was the reason why I picked up the paint brush again in 2002, after a long period of self-pity and being lost.  I noticed, in the photo, that Freud had these sharp, hungry eyes. Hungry not in an aggressive way, but more curious, like little animals checking you out as you approach them. I admire Freud's dedication to his subject matter and his art. Rest in peace, Lucian.