My Frustrations....Part 1

i am a frustrated artist....or aint i!

ever since i can remember, i have always dabbled in the arts .... visual arts as well as the performing arts.

in kinder, i was the reluctant star dancer of manang biday during our graduation ....(but that's another story.)

in elementary school, i drew pictures in crayola and in water color in art class. (i remember having received an honorable mention certificate from the National Children's Library for one of my works.)

in high school, i tried learning to play the guitar but only got so far as to accompany myself singing "More" in my final exams for our music class. i was heavily involved with our school's dramatic guild that staged the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar"....as head spotlight director!!! hehehehehe.

in college, i literally created an entire wallpaper consisting of colorful, interconnected by wire, whole-page glossy advertisements, (from imported GQ magazines and glued on illustration boards) of men's clothes & leather shoes; i "copied" and made a modern wooden candle holder; i created a floor-to-ceiling tie-dyed katsa (cheesecloth) circular corner lamp for my room; and i even designed and made double-purpose cabinet cum cushioned benches made of lawanit (they're so freakin' hard to saw and nail properly!) for my room...i also tried to join a theater group but only lasted a day.

in graduate school, i designed the interior of my itsy-bitsy tiny dormitory room doing all the carpeting, painting, carpentry, and electrical works myself.

and in my more recent past adult life, aside from designing the interiors of our rented apartment, i've made and sold several one-of a-kind desktop meditation fountains (even before they became commercially available!), and painted some angel watercolors.

among all of the above, the closest to my artist "self" are the angel watercolors. there were two factors that spurted me to create them....one was "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron & Mark Bryan, and the other was the Asian financial crisis of 1998.

i did the angel watercolors as part of my taking a self-help "course in discovering and recovering my creative self". after some soul-searching, i chose the visual arts as my vehicle in my "spiritual path to higher creativity ....however, i only finished up to week 4 of the 12-week course ....and these watercolors were what i have to show for it.

i painted all of the more than 30 angel watercolors in the midst of a crisis at work. earlier that year, the vaccine laboratory that we established was just taking of. from an initial staff of 8 in 1995, we peaked at 22. then....i had to let go of 14 of them through the course of that year....one of them was even with us from the start!!! creating the angel watercolors helped lessen the pain of talking to each one of the 14.

i think i haven't thanked them yet....so here goes....thank you my angels for protecting me from the hurt i would've suffered!!! in gratitude, i'll be posting these watercolors in the hope that anyone who needs them will be guided and protected too!