To suffer and ESCAPE

For the last few months I had been dealing with the health issues of an aging parent. All my art related activity had stopped, and I focused on family.

When I did return to painting, plans that were previously made were alien to me. Everything felt very distorted, not an artist’s block, but a disconnect as I was living with more tension than usual. Being a painter is the worst occupation to deal with these emotions. Men’s pride demanded me to work through it.

The Covid pandemic made this situation worse as the new variant Omicron had appeared just as we believed it was coming to an end.

Courtesy of Toronto Star

Note: At the time of this writing, Ottawa is under a siege against the Covid Vaccine Mandate. A grassroots movement called The Freedom Convoy, Canadian truck drivers have set up a Occupation of protest outside of Parliament hill. This movement continues to grow throughout Canada into different provinces.Ontario is now under a State of Emergency.The downtown core of Ottawa is still under occupation and in its 17th day.

2021 had become a mirror image of 2020 except differently distorted and disturbing. Many people were frustrated as traveling had become limited. Vaccine passports have been forced alongside covid masks as a necessity to our daily lives. For the unvaccinated, this had become a barrier to employment, a divided argument among families, and a prison for passionate travelers. Homebound, I could relate to what they were feeling, and wanted to be somewhere else.

Whatever I was going to do next would be living with this tension. I started thinking of ESCAPE, how tight that window of opportunity was for most people, and knew I could not go anywhere. Winter was coming.

Escape drawing. Pencil on kraft paper. 2022

Originally, all I was thinking about was the weather, but then the animals started to come. The Tiger was not planned, and I would find out later that 2022 was the Chinese new year of the Tiger. Interesting synchronicity.

I continued with this idea and developed a painting with no certainty to what was coming next.

Friedrich Nietzsche is always quoted by others as saying “To live is to suffer..” but they often leave out the second line which is the most important part, “to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

I didn’t find any meaning in this suffering. However, if there is someone else going through a similar situation. My hope is, this article helps them feel a little less alone.

Victor

A small dive into ASTRAL PROJECTION

The idea for this painting had been lurking around for a while.
Sometimes it would come up in different forms as I was working on other ideas. I kept pushing it aside, thinking that I might not be able to do it.
When it finally came around again, I figured it would fit into this painting series.

Astral Projection, as defined by wikipedia, “is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE) that assumes the existence of a soul called an “astral body” that is separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it throughout the universe.”

The main difference between this and lucid dreaming,
is the ability to leave the body at will consciously.
A practice of the Nada yoga that had been used in meditation.

There were many visual interpretations of this, but I went in without looking at them. I wanted to get away from the approach of being so literal, reinterpret it as something of my own. It gave me a chance to experiment with some colour approaches I don’t normally use. There was this feeling of peace which I could describe as being underwater at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Water had been used in many religions as a spiritual metaphor for cleansing. This was not something I was consciously thinking about as it had been a very hot summer. The lock down in my city had been lifted, and everyone was going outside to the parks and the patio bars. So it was a good season to be thirsty.

This painting came rather smoothly and not so labor intensive as some others have been in the past. It was very relaxed and made me more interested in the subject. The turbulence of 2020 and the recent lock down made me appreciate the quieter moments.

In closing, I am reminded of a quote from Bruce Lee, during an interview in 1971 which resonated with me during this process.

“Be water my friend, be water.”

Victor Ramirez

SLEEP 12:12

January winter.

The past couple of nights seemed to blend in together when I began
working on SLEEP.

January was usually a cold dark month, and while this is nothing new, in a city still under lock down it felt worse.

For those abroad or in the US, Canada was late in getting the vaccine, so cities were forced to extend their restrictions longer. My city of Toronto ended up shutting down near the end of December.

I wasn’t sleeping very much, and restless for weeks.

Casually, I would notice my clock and see 12 :12 on it before going to bed.
It was something subtle that repeated for a few nights.

I continued to work on various small sketches but I wasn’t feeling much of a connection to what I was doing.

Some people are content with painting still life subjects or landscapes, I’m not one of those. My art supplies were also getting low and I couldn’t buy any more because of store closures.

The only thing that I felt interested in were shapes and form.
At the time I didn’t think very much of what I was producing.
There was a strong desire to get some practice in.

Many sketches were crumpled and thrown out before I settled in on a subject, SLEEP. There was an interest in doing a night scene since the lack of light seemed to dominate my existence. Creativity is a personal thing.

I had started painting as a need to explore ideas. But these were one of those moments where I was having my doubts. This path is not always smooth, as it can be difficult, strange, or erratic. I continued to move forward with it in spite of my reservations.

As I look back on this painting many months later,
I see, that the restlessness I was feeling was my creative intuition protecting my mind. The new lock down was having a detrimental impact on living.

It can be hard to see this when you’re in the middle of it. This inspired me to create a new series of paintings,which I’ve named SLEEPY WORLDS.

Toronto lock down restrictions were finally lifted on June 14, 2021.
The city has begun its reopening plan, and final vaccination shots are now underway.

Victor Ramirez

Under lockdown and SELF ANALYSIS

It has been a year since the Pandemic first arrived in 2020.
Most people were urged to stay in their homes, social distance from each other, wash their hands and wear a mask when you go outside.
We are all too familiar with this now, the new “reality”, and I am no different.

The painting Self Analysis developed quite mildly during this period.
I was finishing up some other projects previously when the Virus broke out.
The plans I had made previously began to change.
What was originally seen as a form of the Flu, began to take a sinister turn.
As like many, I was forced to work from home, and restrict my interaction with others. It was quite an adjustment.

The restriction of freedom in the name of public health was one I accepted.
But, one could not really be prepared for the length of time that this would occur.
The normal things I liked doing, eating out, shopping, and visiting friends and family were all taken away. The only communication I had of the outside world was through social media and television.
I was left only with my home and creativity.

The routine of being under lockdown was making me feel lethargic. Ironically, that is when it hit me, that the couch had become an island, and it was time to escape. The idea of fear and mental health started to resonate.

The fear was all around, from walking with my mask on and passing by people in the street, through to conversations I’ve had with others. Covid-19 had cast it’s shadow on world and each of us were dealing with it in our own way.

There was also the fear of expressing any opinions about it. The media had inundated everyone with information. The wearing of masks had become a political issue. What had become a health crisis has divided people. The mask for some had become a symbol of the oppression of freedom, and censorship. To others, it was been a lifeline of health, safety and survival. New Vaccines have come out to combat the virus.
The distribution to the public is still a contentious issue.

Here we still are in 2021, a moment in time uncertain when or if this will ever end.

Victor Ramirez

THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com

The Mind, Body, and Unrest of SPIRIT

The last painting, SPIRIT, was something I had thought about in one form or another. The stresses of daily life were difficult enough for me to think more about my mental health. It was through this that I became interested in meditation, and started to look at the human body differently.
Slowly, my interest in this subject would escalate over time. First, with my painting THIRD EYE, and then learning about the other Chakras of the energy body. I had originally thought about doing a series of paintings about the Chakras, but it never happened. I would come across many books as inspiration, including an old documentary narrated by Leonard Nimoy called The Human Aura: Documentary on Mysterious phenomenon.

The Human aura was something I was interested in. But just maybe, this idea was too esoteric for people to appreciate. The light body was an abstract concept, giving me some freedom for artistic experimentation. When the last painting for the SPIRIT series came, this felt like it was the right path to explore. I wasn’t really interested in doing a painting about Death, well, the skull and bones version of it. It was during this time that someone in my family about would have health issues. What began as a painting became a personal struggle.

There were many moments where I would start and then stop, wiping off the surface of what I had painted from the canvas and starting over again. This continued repetitively for a couple of weeks. There was a part of me that began to think that I would not finish, or of stopping this completely. But I continued to proceed forward, to keep working as it was the only thing keeping me together. Eventually, the health issues would subside, and the recovery process would begin for them.

I eventually returned to finish my painting, determined to keep going, with renewed purpose and appreciation of life.

Victor Ramirez

CALM before the Start

When I started CALM, I had just moved into my apartment after being away from the city of Toronto for a few years. I was embracing a new kind of peace, living  on my own again. It was very comforting for me, and at the same time exciting.

Originally, my choice of medium  was Oil paints. While I am fond of them, I would quickly learn that working with oils in my new space wasn’t practical. The cleaning up after a session of painting was very labor intensive. There would be a good 30 to 45 minutes spent scrubbing paint off brushes, clearing palettes and garbage while airing out the apartment.

Usually, most of my time for painting would occur in the late evenings after work and dinner. It seemed like the most productive time and very quiet. However, going to sleep after breathing in oil paint for a good hour didn’t feel healthy. The slow drying time made it difficult to store without knocking something over or getting paint everywhere. This was starting to take a toll on me and I decided to change to acrylics.

I wanted to experiment with Acrylic paint and with some of the sketches I had been doing for months. Acrylics was this plastic wet medium which felt uncomfortable at the beginning. At the same time, I was interested in experimenting with how I saw things.

There were many influences going on in this period, I was looking at many book covers from Fantasy & Sci-Fi art from Roger Dean and Boris Valejo as well as classic rock music from the 1970’s. There was a lot of Yes, Boston and Led Zeppelin going into my CD player. “More than a feeling” became a regular anthem.

Most importantly, I began to throw away many misconceptions about what I should be painting and what was acceptable, to just painting without prejudice.  I was just interested in what I saw from my life sketches and not concerned with accuracy. The feeling underneath the lines that moved me.

CALM symbolizes the feeling of peace and inner tranquility. It was a very simple concept and I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue to paint like this or go back. I would do two, at least two more oil paintings before Acrylic paints became my medium of choice. The plastic like textured paint that felt hardening on my hand began to soften.

I felt free and it didn’t feel like I needed anything else outside my canvas and brushes. This painting was a very important step, which would lead to other paintings in my development as an artist. It was the CALM before the start.

Victor Ramirez

*THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ*© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com

THIRD EYE Mind

When Third eye began, I had previously been doodling a face with an eye on its forehead for a couple of months. Most of these sketches were done on small yellow sticky pads of paper in a blue ballpoint pen.It was something that I never seriously gave any thought about, but was very instinctive. Many of these random thumbnails I ended up throwing away. After coming back from a vacation trip, I began to think about this again and started to research more about it.

“In certain dharmic spiritual traditions such as Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna, or brow, chakra.[2] In Theosophy it is related to the pineal gland.The third eye refers to the gate that leads to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness. In New Age spirituality, the third eye often symbolizes a state of enlightenment or the evocation of mental images having deeply personal spiritual or psychological significance. The third eye is often associated with religious visions, clairvoyance, the ability to observe chakras and auras,[4] precognition, and out-of-body experiences.”–Wikipedia

This was fascinating enough that I didn’t need to embellish anything.
It was one of those subjects for a painting that would be too crazy not to do it creatively. What I really wanted to do was capture a moment and pose that didn’t feel like a science diagram. The psychedelic aspect also gave me a chance to explore color. I picked out a sketch from my scrapbook and began to work on it.

As I went further along, I began to discover more about its connection to meditation and sleep. Various cultures have referenced the 6th Chakra, Ajna, in their history, but all had the same meaning. I played with this very loosely in design with my own reinterpretation.

There were many sources of information and inspiration I had on the subject. One in particular, was a book called the Source Field Investigations by David Wilcock, which came from on his You Tube film, the 2012 Enigma, which I had seen in 2010.

It had a more scientific approach to it.

The sixth chakra has many stories attached to it . The training involved in raising ones consciousness, can be dangerous to those who are not prepared to do so. Due to the metaphysical nature of this myth, it cannot be verified and confirmed.
For me, this painting will always be something special and memorable.  Something, I will never forget.

Victor Ramirez

*THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ*© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com

DECISIONS are Heaven and Hell

This started out as a need to do an idea about Good and Evil.
I had been out shopping, browsing for books and later CDs at HMV.
At the listening station, a particular album cover caught my eye.
It was the latest release from a band called Heaven and Hell, formally known as Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio, their second vocalist.

Now, I had been a fan for a long while, so it was nothing new for me to listen to. What really caught my attention was the album cover which had this demon, which was titled “the Devil you know”.
I was left with this feeling of wanting to express this inner turmoil.
I also wanted to interpret this a little differently, and avoid portraying this battle with a Renaissance approach.

My feeling was to make good just as interesting and mysterious as evil. Another aspect I wanted was tension in the body. I chose a drawing that spoke to me more than a facial expression did.

The drawing composition came to me rather quickly, however there was a long struggle through variations of color. It was on my third attempt that I found the brownish tone which I felt contained the warmth and drama I wanted.

The inspiration of the color scheme came from an unlikely source,
the packaging of a box of chocolate chip cookies I had been eating during the process.

An unexpected gift for me. I was very pleased with the results.

Victor Ramirez

*THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ*© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com

FISHTANK in the bedroom

I had been drawing non-stop while commuting to work on the subway everyday.

The idea of deep thought and the body language of people was something I continued to be interested in. Seeing the faces of others and their posture made me wonder how other people went about their day. There was also this desire to draw fish and aquatic things.

I was in the process of decorating my apartment and this interest in a Fishtank became stronger. It was then I decided that I wanted to paint one. I chose a sketch that had been in my scrapbook for a while and proceeded to work on this.

I was so interested in fish that I went into a pet store and took some photos of aquariums. My purpose was to capture some of their movements, but when I started to take photos, all the fish in the tank looked my way and became self-conscious. This was both strange and amazing to me, but it didn’t always work. So I was forced to improvise some of the material.

The main figure had come from one person sitting across from me on the subway in the early morning. It felt like he was in another place, his thoughts completely absent and indifferent to my presence. I wanted to capture that feeling, and brought that into the tank.

Fishtank hangs in my bedroom currently and I am still very pleased with how it all turned out.
It was worth it.

Victor Ramirez

*THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ*© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com

WELCOME

For about a year, there were some thoughts that I had wanted to keep a record of in a way that I couldn’t under normal circumstances.

History has a way of getting lost if you don’t document it.

People try to remember things and pretty soon the facts become myths. You forget how and why you ever got started.

I decided to create this page, this creative diary, to speak about my art, and to share some moments about how things came to be.

Mostly, I wanted to record the memories I have had along the way.

Personal vision is my guide.

Victor Ramirez

*THE ART OF VICTOR RAMIREZ*© All written articles and visual images are the copyright and creation of Victor H. Ramirez-vichramirez2015, and not affiliated with rhometechdesign.com