painting club

So I've started a mini oil painting class at home.

Made up of three enthusiastic mothers looking to harness their painting genes, and keen to dabble their week's stress away.

My qualifications? Only the few semesters' worth of painting classes and holiday-time painting with Joan Kelly, some of the happiest times I had in art school. They were the times I really felt like I liked ADM. They were the times I really felt like an artist, what with the airy painting studio, large easels, and my stained apron.

And I remember the first lesson she taught: how to see. How to see the many subtle colours on a white object. How to see light and shadow, how to tell yellow light from blue light. Painting class switched my view of the world from 8-bit VGA colour to billions and billions of colours.

It's been fun, buying more easels, buying starter kits, setting up.

And today, Lesson 3, was spent across the road at the lake for nature painting. Not my favourite painting genre. But you never feel like an artist until you're setting up your easel by a lake like they do in your imagination of Austen-time artists.

pinterest

So I've recently acquired a pinterest account.

It saves me from spamming facebook or twitter with photos of things unrelated to me and of no use to my communities.

It saves me from having to save them on my computer's hard drive.

It eliminates the need for me then to reach into that hard drive, pull it out again, and post it on my blog.

(Besides, in social media today, blogs are like what VCDs are to us now--not as obsolete as LDs or cassettes, but not bought anymore because of DVDs and downloads. But I blog, and that's another story.)

Pinterest lets me spam pictures of things like

and

without feeling like I'm cheating people's feelings.

Because we all have images to upkeep on large social media vehicles like Facebook, ones that do not obsess over makeup and bunnies. But in the throwaway image vacuum that is Pinterest, it's just another image that can be ignored in a vast pinboard.

Anyway, feel free to repin me at http://pinterest.com/theleia/

Sad Faces

I was named the "Dark artist" back in school, because all my portraits inadvertently turned out sadder and gloomier than everyone else's.

Never mind that I wasn't angsty, gothic, or depressed.

The shadows on my faces were always sharp, their eyes angry, and my professors and classmates would laugh at me.

Now I steer away from harsh shadows and try to paint in pretty colors. But there's an inevitable leaning towards the melancholy, as I consciously or subconsciously make their faces look like they're wet from just crying.

Sad is beautiful to me.

But yes, I am painting again, and that can only be a good thing.

Girl crush

Every time I see this girl, I want to cut heavy bangs again.

That's what girl crushes are like; girls want to be like them.

 

 Looking at her before I get ready to go out always makes me wear a t-shirt with jeans and some bright lipstick. And then of course it doesn't have the same effect.

Some girls' looks are all about the clothes, like interesting layers and signature accessories. But Natalie's look is total--her height, skin color, minimal cool eye makeup, and the hair. The clothes look nice because of the girl, and that is a beauty success story. 

It would almost be like if she put on more eye makeup and did her hair perfectly, her look would be ruined. That is something I need to figure out--integrating "undone-ness" to achieve an overall perfect look.

Natalie Suarez, natalieoffduty.blogspot.com

Despair is made up of many small things.

People you know flaunting big gigs, making big waves.

Paychecks that have yet to arrive.

Having to leave the house to get out of the way but not knowing where.

Nothing happening all week.

Water retention.

Waiting for calls for confirmed work.

Foo fighters cancelling on Singapore.

Having nothing to say about my day because nothing happened.

Not having enough money to take a budget flight for a friend's wedding.

Not having enough money to buy presents.

It's true, without work one is helpless, useless, boring.

Work was made to give us fulfilment, to make us tired by evening, and proud of our day.

Someone said that freelance work is a "feast or famine" lifestyle.

There are always jobs to take on, not always the right ones for me. But until I can flaunt big gigs and make big waves, I can't choose.

Next week, please come quickly.

Unattractive God

The NUS Campus Crusade fiasco erupted because of a few words. Words that, many Christian groups will admit, we hold to. We just don't put them in print.

Which of us Christians, if we truly believe in One God, has not prayed that our loved ones will also come to know Christ? If we don't have that desire for others to know Him, it would mean that all we profess to believe is not actually true. It would mean that our religion is interchangeable and disposable, not very important for anybody's salvation. Not even our own. And it would mean that we are following an unattractive God, who we don't really want anybody else to get to know. But we love God. We love what He has done for us. So we want to share that with others.

Some go about it strongly and forcefully. Some go about it timidly. But the belief is the same.

I can understand why non-believers take offense at the Crusade materials. Belief, no matter how pure its origins, becomes offensive when it erects an Us vs. Them wall. It reads like an exposed battle plan, rather than a message of love.

And I believe that love is its intention. Just that in print, that love did not get communicated. How different it would have been if the flyer had talked about reaching out to comfort Thais stricken by the floods, struggling with property loss and poverty? Instead, it chose to zero in on the solution, which is to bring the implied "true joy" of knowing Christ to them.

Honestly, I feel for the Campus Crusade students (and staff). I do not believe that they were walking around with an air of superiority, looking down on all non-believers as joyless. I believe that they had intentions of love. But it is a problem when that love fails to be communicated, or is perceived to be offensive. Even if the flyer was meant for internal circulation.
--
As a student, I was also heavily involved in Campus Crusade. And I was also involved in producing an internal publication. One day I was hiding in a corner of my school, folding these newsletters for distribution, when my professor walked by and found me. She picked one of them up. I was terrified. Religion--especially Christianity--does not generally sit well with art school professors.

She read the whole thing through, with occasional "hmm"s. I tried not to look at her.

Then she said, "This is so surprising. Where I come from (the States), we come to see Christianity as such a negative thing with all the politics... But here there are so many stories about how it is a positive thing in people's lives! It actually... helps people!"

It was a special Testimony Edition, with quotes from many students about what they were thankful for.

So when this NUS thing erupted, I often thought back about the publications I had distributed. They were approved by the university, for sure, but we were just as vulnerable to an internet explosion as anybody else. It was just a blessing that my flyer happened to give a warm impression to my agnostic professor.

What happens then, when it's no longer Testimony Edition, but Evangelism Edition? When we talk about evangelism, will our words be misread as battle plans, or will they be read as loving? Will we unwittingly make God unattractive, or show Him to be the loving God we can't wait to share with others?

crossing streams

Finally I am free enough to go wherever I please.

I've been toying with a few possibilities. Everyone I know seems to be going through the same desire to switch careers. It could be because we jumped into jobs too soon, or jumped into them for the sake of learning, and now we've learnt all we can at this level.

But if I should cross the stream, it will be to something vastly different.
I will share more when it happens.
But for now all I know is my heart is still with the children I know by face and name.