About the Exhibition:

It’s that time of the year when the cats of CatmaSutra come out to play!

Bright, quirky, and capable of levitation, the seventh installation of catmaSuta cat art exhibition is once again back at Utterly Art. The seven year itch has only served to cook up more mischief as the catmaSutra cat takes you to that sweet spot of whimsical bliss and light-heartedness. “If we stop and observe how life flows, we’ll notice how the universe is made up of individual moments which when appreciated fully, gains a shape akin to a smile from the heart – a personal heaven.” Paul’s paintings take his audience through these moments using the cat as the perfect allegory to create a personal space that tugs at the heartstrings!

Come check out some of the available catmaSutra collectibles and smile-getters (2012 calendar cards, tile coasters and keepsake boxes), the purr-fect gifts this festive season.

Find out more at catmasutra!

This is one of a set of catmaSutra paintings entitled “See-no-evil”  or Morning Cat. As you would have guessed, part 2 and 3 (hear-no-evil {afternoon cat}, and “speak-no-evil”{evening cat}) will soon follow. The design is also available for iPhone 4, iPhone 3, iTouch 2, iTouch4. I’ll probably add in the iPad versions as well so stay tuned!

Here’s the natural inspiration of the above painting – Halo doing her “See-No-Evil” stance. I think we can learn a lot from a cat, the way it stretches, the way it seems to live its life. Maybe it’s a way of slowing things down as per lifespan, they age much faster than we do; but everything is relative, if we don’t take time out to enjoy stretching and doing nothing once in a while, we may indeed live to regret it!

Awoke from the depths of a somewhat dangerous dream to watch the sun-rise today. It’s like spring time, in between seasons, alive with the fluttering of wings and tweets of sun birds and sparrows. In these twilight minutes, just before the shape of heat takes on its over-powering form, the breezes are kind and gentle, the dark clouds moving rapidly away revealing a tinge of red behind  big bright chirpy clouds.

~Master Oogway

There is a thread that ties everything together. Watching the pedestrians commuting, anonymous and interchangeable in every way, a  boy would become the older man walking ahead of him; an elderly woman waiting to board the bus was the young lady behind her. The thread is so visible for a second, interweaving reality with a supernatural bond, and yet we hold on so tightly to our own ignorance, trying to break the thread in every way imaginable.

Of a story about the Australian Aborigines told by a guide on a recent trip, when  they have reaped the nourishment from a certain plant, they put up a sign to let others know that the plant has been harvested and will need time to re-grow. The thread is as evident as it is natural. They depended on the land, and thus they respected and cared for it. With all the technology of the modern world, we have not only failed to recognize this thread but worse, alienate ourselves from it.

The shape of heat follows the thread of our actions, “The universe is such a balanced instrument that any act immediately sets corrective forces into action,” global warming, oil spills, depleting forests, greed, technology for the sake of consumption proclaimed as the state of advancement. Can’t help but feel that we’re all living in a lie.

In the valley of the Blue Mountains, the air is fresh, moist, lush and fragrant. There’s a tingling of the senses; it makes you feel connected to the land. Not sure how things will balance out in the future. We’re beginning to see how fragile our environment is.  Our past informs our future; our present is a gift to the truth. How do we even begin to see, feel, live in a new way?

I think we have lived life many times over and died as many times in a single lifetime. I woke up from the night to the excited fluttering of wing-beats and tweets; the sparrows and sun birds are happy today. I realized I have died in my sleep so that I can live again today.

Green Peace

catmaSutra cat art

If you’re working in Singapore, time almost always seems to run out pretty quickly. It’s an easy excuse to say that you have no time because of work; in fact I think it’s a common excuse. You and I are both guilty of it but I suspect that deep inside, we know that there is in fact, time – time to call loved ones, send a sms, or just making an effort to do something. As we grow into a job, we should aim not only to become more efficient, but more importantly to see things in the proper perspective and that entails saying “stop”. It’s time to do that something else for yourself or your family. Finding something you love to do is crucial. Otherwise it’s more like doing time and waiting for the special getaway once a year (mountains, trees, and a motorcycle).

Life never ceases to be magical and interesting. It becomes more so when you’re able to step back a little from it. For me personally, life is really like a movie that you project in front of you. Much of it is fiction. In every of our waking moment, we can decide what kind of movie we wanna watch, sad or happy, depressing or uplifting, boring or exciting. The fun part is that it really doesn’t matter – it’s just a movie.I don’t think that each human being is that much different from another. All of us want to be happy. In the core of our being, we’re the same. It’s the movies that differ, that tell us that things should be this way or that. It’s like every being has a  box over their heads. In that sense, everybody is fighting for the remote control over these mind boxes. If more and more people get to see more of your movies, then you’re in control and therefore shape that world accordingly. It’s the same for Hollywood movies, the same for advertising, as it is for office or world politics.

I read somewhere that if the earth’s resources are shared equally, there is more than enough for every single person. That’s of course, one world view that will never materialize.  Eventually, each movie will end and we have to return to ourselves, hopefully to the center of our peace – without the projections, without the distractions. That is the truth – nirvana. Hopefully, we will find that center sooner rather than later. That is pure living without the highs and lows, and in learning to live, we inevitably learn how to let go and move on.

Quiet. There is a silent moment in everything. Shhhh… Stop thinking. Listen. There are birds chirping like surround sound, filtered from urban noise. Neighbor’s chopping away incessantly at something (you wonder how many people they’re cooking for), cars and trucks moving in and out, engine’s idling, people shouting. Relax. Allow the breathing to become calm, foster that lightness of being.Quiet amongst the noise, even in the most mundane stuff… There are so many people who works so hard to leave a legacy behind. This baffles me. What legacy? Every moment is a play of patterns, of noise and clutter. The only legacy worth leaving behind is the way we live our lives – the most intangible things are often the most precious ones.

Angel wakes at 4:30 am, and like an ninja assassin, treads lightly on my sleep, exercising his claws on my chest, then sits, then lies, watching my consciousness stirring back to life. “Heya…”, I said telepathically. Angel nods and replies, “It’s time”. I get up and open the door, and he promptly sneaks out. I’m back on my bed, shifting gears in dreamland when Halo comes in later in the morning. She finds my legs under the covers and promptly uses them as her pillow, shielding her eyes from the morning light with her paws. I remember when they were kittens. Another hour and I’ll wake.

The heart is a strange thing. It is a hard disk with seemingly unlimited storage space, cluttered and choke full of stuff, both remembered and forgotten. Once something happened, it’s there. Cut it up and it creaks open like an ancient door with rusted hinges, and there’s a rabbit hole, much like the one depicted in Alice in Wonderland. The natural instinct is to fall. It’s a scary flight down the rabbit hole, but you’ll soon get used to the gravity of it all; at the end of it, you’ll find a pinhole of light that opens into a continuous universe of twinkling stars. The silent nature of each thought, of each experience is right here, within us.

Carry Me Away

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown.
It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
~Charlie Chaplin

Wed 3rd to Wed 10th Feb 2010 @

Alliance Française de Singapour

1 Sarkies Road, 2nd Level

Opening hours:

11am to 7pm daily

Or contact Ms Chen Man Lee

for appointments:

Cell: + 65 9675 7721

My Quirky Valentine is a quirky cat-art show that reveals and celebrates the innumerable diversities and expressions of love. As the Persian poet, Rumi would say, “A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.” Indeed, it is important to grow into the person that you are first (which is more a process of letting go then changing oneself), come full circle into all the unique qualities that define us, and when truly realized, reflects the universal. With this connectedness, it is essentially a celebration of emptiness that contains everything! And everything becomes a celebration…

“The whole world lives within a safeguarding, fish inside waves, birds held in the sky… even the ground, the water, every spark floating up from the fire, all subsist, exist, are held in the divine. Nothing is ever alone for a single moment.” ~Rumi

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

~Rumi

My Quirky Valentine is about the thousand half-loves that fire our imagination to that which we truly love, the passion which fills our hearts and minds. As our hearts get  larger, it seems capable of holding more things, it becomes flexible, lighter, and funnier! In the same way, the more we hold on to our identity, the more solid our problems become. It always pays to look at the lighter side of things…

“Charlie’s cat”, 30 x 30″

“We are such stuff

As dreams are made on,

and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

~Shakespeare

“That Furry Thing Called Love”, 30 x 30″

Love is a mainly-furry thing,
It’s the April rose that only grows in the early spring,
Love is nature’s way of giving a reason to be living,
The golden crown that makes a man a king.

Once on a high and windy hill,
In the morning mist two lovers kissed and the world stood still,
Then your fingers touched my silent heart and taught it how to sing,
Yes, true love’s a mainly furry thing.

“Come Fly Away With Me”, 24 x 30″

Maybe it’s due to the lack of seasons here that the rain takes on a stronger significance in deciphering the natural rhythm of time. I have always found the rain to be strangely alluring and familiar, as if revealing the rise and fall of things. Rain puts us in a different mood, albeit being portrayed as such in movies, it does have a strong subliminal grip on our senses. It swings us temperamentally into moods as disparate as sweet-coziness (think snuggling up in bed on a stormy night), introspection with a tinge of darkness creeping up, or as popularly portrayed in the folklore of  human kind, sadness, tragedy, romantic ups and downs, and the ultimate redemption. It seems inevitable that rain should be used in movies as it is such a primal mover of our emotions.

It was a very wet end to 2009, more so than I can remember in recent years. Time and again, I felt compelled to be out there with the rain, capturing the out-pouring of emotions (sometimes it felt like the whole world was crying but didn’t know it yet…and i needed to document it somehow) Maybe because I’ve been painting full time for a while – time, the misunderstood condition of our time  – that means no more regulated time, no more 9-7, and the end of artificial and disharmonious rules that govern the way we live – freedom? Freedom is a wild creature and sometimes I don’t think our ‘society-conditioned’ body is equipped to deal with it. We have to spend time with it, understand it, accept and then let it go…

I saw a swallow fly when I was writing this with its beautiful lines and traced the shape of its unrestrained flight. I watched little flowers appear on treetops as if by magic and white butterflies fluttering amongst it and these are road-side trees planted in the public car park behind my apartment!  There is indeed beauty everywhere if we have the time and space to see them. The mechanic who works in a shop downstairs would raise his song-birds to the treetops via a pulley system, while he sits in his rain-washed chair, listening to the chirping of his company of birds. Soften the heart and let it open, open to more of everything, the big and the small. Life is a simple paradox.The most valuable things are free and close by but difficult to find.  Our time here is short, yet it can seem like a long time. Life is tiny to the world and history of time, yet it means everything to us. Everything is connected, with threads tying everything together. How we move in turn move all the things that are tied to us one way or another. So don’t just live. Have a beautiful vision. Hold on to it.Walk softly, live gently.