Artist Notes Outloud : Creative Outburst & Permission Fairies
Artist Notes Outloud can be viewed here
Creative Outburst & Permission Fairies
A new project, casual and unedited. I am speaking directly to you, all who wants to listen. A nuanced and unedited musing, an artist note but this time it’s spoken outloud.
I’ve always loved Maya Angelou, and I am reading her daily ritual and then musing about what I call the Creative Outburst. I realise lately when I am preparing for an exhibition, I forgotten that the fun is the point, and I get serious about the whole process, to a degree that I lose the joy in the doing. I realise also that I inherited this work horse mentality and genes from my mother. She’s recently shown an cautionary tale of how a toxic mix of impatience, desire to get a job done immediately at any cost, and the cost is a mini meltdown and harassment, that is her harassing me to rush it, to drop everything I am doing, and to attend to her scheduled rushing, so she can get it over with. I unfortunately have to tell her that the world doesn’t work like this, and I cannot help her immediately. She apologised and went silent after she realises that she’s gone too intense, again.
So here’s to Permission Fairies, that’s what I consider those magical beings within that gives us the permission to fall apart, to fail, to correct course, to be authentically ourselves. I don’t have to explain more than this, if you get it. It’s good. If you don’t, that’s ok too.
And I am here for more Creative Outbursts, which has to be given space, lots of time and space, and ‘permission’ and once all this is ‘made conscious’. It all can happen. It takes effort, especially in a culture where it’s mostly hustle, like Singapore. It isn’t a perfect world, I don’t mean it’s better elsewhere than here, not at all. I just notice that in cultures where artists is historically a legitimate profession and career, it is easier to find ‘permission’ to be ourselves. And in cultures that doesn’t. This includes most of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and to unknown degrees, Vietnam and Thailand. The global south does have a different kind of artistic history, that is bifurcated with crafts and commerce. More on that later. I digress.
Having fun! Till the next one.