wayvy weekly //// [what the fuck am I doing?]

A large part of the aim of wayvydon is to demystify my creative practice, and art in general. As we enter an era of unprecedented productivity and technology makes the formerly impossible routine, I find myself asking, so why? What do I do with all this knowledge, all this power. And why, for the love of God am I putting myself out there constantly only to be met by apathy from those I care about most. So, in the spirit of transparency, I hope by thinking about this publicly I can at worst help myself sort my thoughts, at best give you something to chew on or motivate you to express yourself authentically too.

Truthfully. I am just fucking around, hoping to find out. Much like Newton, whose entire life’s work as we consume it today was inspired by an apple dropping onto his head, I am sitting under the proverbial apple tree of life expecting inspiration to strike at any moment. Similar to how I imagine the first person to trip shrooms felt, I ask myself what’s the worst that can happen? It is not lost on me how significant my existence is. In the same way it is not lost on me how significant your existence is. How significant it is that you are reading this at this moment. It is significant because it took innumerable human lives, human ingenuity, human perseverance and divine grace for us to be able to complain about inflation on our magic telecommunication boxes.

As I gaze on the past with reverence, I set my sights on the future with a proportional hope and vigour. Something will come after me. Someone. And I hope that they are able to learn from the mistakes and triumphs I experienced in my life. I feel compelled to look beyond what I can see. What I can touch, perhaps to a fault. Regardless, it is my humble hope that one person can read this, can share in our experience of existence and say, “Yeah man, you know what I understand where you’re coming from.” Every historic artist from times gone understood something intrinsic to the human condition. Michelangelo dissected cadavers to understand the human anatomy, much to the chagrin of those who were in charge during his life. Able to recreate the human form with such accuracy we still revere his depictions today despite all of our modern technology. Basquiat understood the importance of play within our industrial framework. How paramount it is to maintain a youthful joy in life and protect your inner child’s expression without losing your ability to function as an adult in society. I’m not sure what I will leave behind for our descendants, but just as the first humans left their handprints on the walls of their caves to let us know We Were Here, And We Have Been Here For A Long Time, I too feel that innate compulsion to make my mark on the tapestry on humanity. Rage into the darkness in the face of confusion, rejection, war, strife and misunderstanding. To continue to imagine a better way. A brighter future.

PEACE

You know how its impossible to hear a song without thinking about exactly where you were in life and what you were doing at that time? Versus movies which kind of meet you wherever you are in life at that time and can be a completely different experience every time you watch it? I feel like that with the wayvywork of this week, PEACE. Its something of a self portrait, but its weird cus when I think about ‘me’ I don’t really imagine my body or my face, despite this work obviously resembling me. I think a lot about Renaissance paintings and their hyper realistic depictions of life that cameras came along and rendered obsolete. Yet sometimes one can take a picture of themselves and not feel represented by the image, like a mugshot. I digress, but in this piece I try to unearth the more ephemeral elements of what makes up a human. Like if you were to take all your experiences and quirks and put them into another human body, would it still be you? Would what the body looks like, or how the body is perceived change? The same way that Mexican men see themselves in a fictitious Japanese alien martial artist, can you see yourself in my depiction of me? Touching more on the actual composition, I love the juxtaposition of the cartoonish face and the realistic hands chalking up the deuces. I am a massive fan of multimedia pieces, as it just doesn’t make sense to me to restrict oneself to one medium. The red eyes and sharp teeth reveal a devious nature underneath the cheeky smile, and I chose specifically to not use skin pigments to create a sort of universal figure that anyone can project onto, yet with the blue locs its still kind of understood to be a black man. And of course, the effortless strokes of acrylic on the hoodie really ground the piece in the pink and yellow pastel squiggles that serve as a background. What do you see? Please let me know in the COMMENTS UNDERNEATH THE POST PLEASE DAWG I AM BEGGING. anyway, stay wayvy y’all. until next time <3