Catmasutra 4 – Paper Boat

Rainy days are special days, and I remember always running out to watch the rain as a child. Sometimes, I made paper boats and set them afloat onto the drain. I watch them travel as far down as possible before the rain beat them down. Sometimes after a thunderstorm, a new scene emerges as if the old one has been peeled away. Perhaps that is the true reality, that every moment is a new beginning if we catch ourselves and choose to see it.

At the end of each cycle, at the end of each dark cloud, a bright one is always waiting to shine through. Perhaps as we grow older, we discriminate too much, tend to see everything as a continuity, from one thing to the next, from the past to the present into the future. If one paper boat sinks, we can always make another one! No matter what we plan to do, we should act on the thought without thinking too much about it. When we think we can do something later, we would have lost the moment. Like a child running out to play in the rain, he would never have to think twice!

There is always more than one way to live a life. The “real world” is never really out there, but if you believe what others tell you, then that is your real world. People from different cultures think differently. We think differently in part because our government has taught us how to think. If everything revolves around money and stability and growth, then that is your reality. t takes a lot of courage and practice to believe in oneself but it’s definitely more exciting than living a life that is not entirely yours.

Stories are always true,
it’s the facts that mislead.

Catmasutra 4- Big Mind, Small Mind

 A mind not to be changed by place or time,
the mind is its own place,
and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell of Heaven.”
~John Milton

This is a play on Play Imaginative’s flagship designer toy, Trexi – a 3-inch tall action figure with a rotating head and articulated limbs. The Catmasutra cat draws its essence from my cat Halo, and the Trexi “mini-me” draws its essence from the Catmasutra cat. They are different, yet the same, as they are both the essence of the artist. And yet in creating them, the artist is both catmasutra cat and the Trexi! Haha… And Trexi has a new Catmasutra manifestation now in addition to the ones by Tokidoki and Devilrobots… “Big Mind, Small Mind” is also an abstraction using a little Zen as a reference philosophy… So still yourself as I indulge myself…

Trace every man-made thing around us and you will be led back to the same origin – a singular thought that sets into motion new cycles that intertwine and create even more and newer cycles, that reinforces one more than the other. If the cycle gets big enough, you’ll have a powerful engine that manifests and make real, our hopes and dreams, our fears and greed, just as electricity was discovered, just as the atomic bomb was made, just as our capacity for war and peace manifests themselves internally and externally.

“Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind.”

Catmasutra 4, the exhibition!

CATMASUTRA IV PAINTING EXHIBITION

UTTERLY ART – 13th – 23rd DECEMBER 2007
Tel: + 65 6226 2605 Cell: 94872006 Contact: Keng Hock
Email: utterlyart@pacific.net.sg

229A South Bridge Road Singapore 058778 2nd Level
Opening hours: 11am to 8pm, Monday to Sunday

catmasutra- Chill out with Popsicles!

A whimsical piece, “Popsicles” is the largest painting being exhibited in Catmasutra 4, this December (13th – 23th) at Utterly Art ! It measures 36″ x 36″, and features a pair of legs in stockings with the Catmasutra cat balancing as if in perfect unison with the colorful, super flat popsicle-like structures. It brings back memories of seeing children playing in one of those “fish tank” filled with colorful balls in Ikea (which disguises the need for parents to be free of their charges). Seemingly frozen yet warm and cuddly, laced with delicious temptation and playful innocence, this is the ultimate playpen for adults!

“Popsicles” is a case of waking up one morning, and wanting to do something big, fun, bright and playful. There is a mood to create a different feel, to test the elasticity between things; wahahaha I ended up combining flat colors with the cat and legs, blur the relationship between them, test gravity, play with temperatures and and put a weird flexibility to the one-dimension pops!

Catmasutra 4, the exhibition!

UTTERLY ART – 13th – 23rd DECEMBER 2007
CATMASUTRA IV PAINTING EXHIBITION

 

229A South Bridge Road Singapore 058778 2nd Level
Opening hours: 11am to 8pm, Monday to Sunday;)

Catmasutra – The Bearable Lightness of Being

Catmasutra 4, the exhibition – opening reception today, 7 pm!

UTTERLY ART – 13th – 23rd DECEMBER 2007
CATMASUTRA IV PAINTING EXHIBITION

229A South Bridge Road Singapore 058778 2nd Level
Opening hours: 11am to 8pm, Monday to Sunday

Interview with the artist at Sparklette.net

A lotus for you,
a Buddha to be.

“…the exuberant, unfolding, unpredictable universe,
expanding when it should be contracting,
made largely of something that is not something but nothing -
dark energy, anti-matter.
A thing unconfined.
What to say when the certainties fail?
Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. “

Strangely enough, I did this painting from negative to positive, from dark to light, beginning with a black-greenish background, outlined with white chalk before painting in the colors. And the lotus actually grows in muddy waters while it rises above the surface to bloom. When the sun sets, the lotus flower closes and sinks underwater but at dawn, it reappears in all its splendor, untouched by impurity. And I painted the cat in its usual cheeky and blissful self, completely oblivious of everything else but the here and now, lying on a large lotus leaf, with three fishes leading the way, guided by lotus flowers as nature’s signposts.

There is no past, no future in the here and now, just the cat drifting through a vast thought that becomes an entire universe. Everything is as they should be, the present moment as it is, without the pull of the past or push of the future – this bearable lightness of being – the only moment that really belongs to us. When we touch this moment, everything becomes real. I miss this painting already, having brought most of the paintings to the gallery.

“Do not lose yourself in the past,
do not run after the future.”

“To lose the present is to lose life.”

Quotes by Jeanette Winterson, Buddha, Thich Nhat Hanh

Catmasutra 4, the exhibition!

UTTERLY ART – 13th – 23rd DECEMBER 2007
CATMASUTRA IV PAINTING EXHIBITION

229A South Bridge Road Singapore 058778 2nd Level
Opening hours: 11am to 8pm, Monday to Sunday