Please tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a multimedia artist from Long Island, New York. I recently started sculpting again, and participated in a group exhibit at the Grady Alexis gallery in Manhattan, New York. The proceeds from the art sold is used to support immigrants. It was a very exciting and the experience I had during he exhibit was thrilling.
When you create, what inspires you?
Most times my inspiration comes from my surroundings, or things I do when I’m not working on a project or the next. Lately I find reading to be more helpful, as it helps me with titles of my work but the idea for the work is always from an image or video and sometimes a movie. In the past I has limited resources to seek inspiration for a project, now it’s a little bit easier for me because of the change in technology which is like a library for me to do my research.
Tell us about the specific inspiration behind one or each of your accepted pieces.
For the piece title “The Call Girl,” I was browsing through old magazine adverts fro the 70’s, what lead me to that was a research I had to do for my advertising project. I came across some black and white photos used in adverts and one had a lady on the phone, so I used it as a reference and illustrated her with short hair and a different phone. When I painted her hair black and gold she began to look different and as I applied different colors, it was like her feeling became different as well. She went from answering a call with a smile to feeling a little bit sad about the conversation between her and the caller.
What is your medium of choice? Why?
For me the correct medium of choice is pen, it doesn’t only brings out my true style of drawing but keeps my trying to avoid mistakes as in go. I do draw with pencils and it comes out looking comic style, which I prefer when doing a painting.
How did you first discover your love for creating?
Since I can remember, growing up I always love drawing and watching cartoons. As I kept practicing different techniques my drawings were getting better especially with details, I drew cartoon characters, and things around me at the time. One day when my ride home was arriving late I decided to draw my school surroundings, it came of perfect and that was my first good drawing I did with pen. Later I switched back to drawing with pencils then other things like using charcoal, and pastel fell into place. I taught my self how to paint like I did with drawings because painting is the stuff I find very intriguing. Sculpting was never interesting to me till I took a ceramic class and the professor complemented my craftsmanship, so I decided to go for it and it worked.
fēlan is old English for feel. What makes you feel attraction?
fēlan for me is when a thing connects or communicates to me, the stuff that makes me feel is colors, my favorite color being purple which means nobility, royalty, majesty, spiritual and mysterious.
Please feel free to add anything else you think is relevant.
I’m thankful for all the artistic support and opportunities that has been offered to me.
fēlan 