Drawing Saved My Life
There is so much pleasure in seeing things clearly - in viewing the world as if it were the first time you were seeing it.
I remember having fantasies of being on stage. Fantasies I’ve had since I was 8 years old. I would imagine myself playing someone on stage, from Christine from The Phantom of The Opera to a character I would make up in my head. It was fully formed, and I would sing all the parts. Perhaps it was my own way of coping after my father died when I was 7 years old. I didn’t feel sadness when he died. I always felt a sense of abandonment, this abandonment felt more like an emptiness, and an “uprooting” from my original home with my parents to the big extended family with my grandmother and all my cousins. I remember the exact day my mother left for Cyprus a few months after my father vanished from the face of the earth. She missed most of my childhood - I would spend it riding bikes around the barangay plaza, going to the beach, singing, dancing, and reading. Apart from my parents leaving, I still felt happy doing my own thing.
I learned to lean on my own happiness, I learned how to be singleminded and independent. Maybe that’s why I could live completely by myself when I was 17, surrounded by phantoms and the ghosts of our original home, which I transformed into an art studio with the help of my grandmother’s donations: her mahjong tables and chairs. And my best friend Clint, who made me a makeshift studio lamp, so I could draw and do my watercolors. I was mostly alone during that period, surrounded by a few friends from time to time. My solitude was filled with beautiful things, meaningful friendships, and sexual adventures. The first time I had sex with a stranger, he was 10 years older than me. It was pretty boring, the only thrilling part was the anxiety I felt because I kept thinking to myself, “What if he kills me?” But he was sweet enough. He treated me to dinner and I bought him coffee. We went to his place afterward and just cuddled a little bit. He wasn’t my type - I just felt really lonely after being with someone that I had gotten extremely close to. I had just turned 18 a few days ago and felt the weight of my boyhood coming to a close. I told the man I didn’t want to do anything except cuddle but of course that never went anywhere. I gave him what he wanted like I always do with men - I needed to fill this empty cave to please the superior man, the older man, the more capable man. I saw him a few years later at the movie theater lining up. Of course, we just had to see each other. We hugged like old friends, and he did feel like an old friend, not someone I slept with.
I was already 20 at the time, feeling like a different person already. All I did was make art, I was purpose-driven and strong-willed. I love making my imagination go wild, letting the flow take its own course, compared to planning ahead and following the rules. This is where drawing comes into the picture. When I draw, I see things as they are. When I draw, the unconscious takes over, the world is in my hands - the world defined by my ego, the center in which I feel, think, and observe. In my drawings, my father is alive, in the stories I illustrate, I weave like a spider making a pattern on its web. In my drawings, I come alive after my cancer, after they amputated my leg, and I come out victorious at the hospital. In my drawings, the child is redeemed, the psychoanalytic journey traversed.
I remember my professor telling everyone in one of our classes, that I make my own little world. This little world, like the spirit houses of Thailand, is a miniature replica of their original home. When people criticize my work for being narcissistic or for being too selfish, I disagree. I say one thing: my art saved me. There is nothing selfish in making any form of art, as it is meant to be shared with the rest of the world. It’s an expansion to hold another’s hand, the stranger, despite the anxiety that would come with it. We must set aside everything to make our own spirit house, and we must keep it clean and pure. The personal is a subterranean waterworld within the unconscious, filled with secrets and mysteries. The farther we go to the moon or to other planets, the closer we need to get inside our hearts and understand ourselves better. When I draw my hand moves in accordance to nature, as does an ant that does its work diligently for the good of its nest. We must answer to our nature, and fill our spirit house with beautiful things.
I’m showing drawings here that I mostly did with graphite, observational sketches, and studies. There is so much pleasure in seeing things clearly - in viewing the world as if it were the first time you were seeing it. Everything starts to become very slow, like a flower blooming in real-time. The best drawings I did were when I felt intense emotions, where I could almost touch the feeling. I grab hold of it and never let it go. In art school, I learned the process of whacking my head to bits and pieces until I got it just right. I think young artists should work very hard if they're truly passionate, and answer to the creative impulse. We live in an era of repression - the obsession to communicate constantly in a more artificial way, through our phones, through computers, and through constant chatter. We need art more than ever, the unfiltered versions of ourselves: because only then we can start to truly feel an authentic connection to one another.
The flow, always the flow, speaking of which, the dextrose that kept me alive for years, the bruised skin from all the injections and medicines that I was subjected to. I feel like a mermaid with one leg, a siren wanting to lure sailors to their deaths. There is so much to say, so much to unravel, and to put the pieces together in the spirit house. I believe so much in trusting the dream and analyzing the dream. These days my dreams are nightmares. Nightmares of people touching my penis and nightmares of being subjected to total darkness afterward. The darkness which has a tar-like quality, envelops my whole body. Black goo, embryotic fluid, it smells like death, the grip on my penis a tight, unpleasant feeling. I stop moving, I try to open my eyes, and say something, but I can’t. I can feel my bones melting and I try to scream. But only a slight squeal comes out. I trust the dream, even if it was a nightmare, and interpret it as pure instinct. Drawing is like dreaming to me, where I can contort figures and people from my imagination.
I can exaggerate and simulate real-life situations so they feel less heavy. When I draw, everything starts to disappear. I am locked into a periphery of vision where I can unleash violence. I’ve developed a language of my own through drawing, an alchemic language where lines, spaces, and form come into play. I was always heavily inspired by expressionism, and I was drawn to works that were not so well known. For example, Munch’s lesser-known watercolors or Schiele’s small village sketches. Turner’s prostitute sketches. I always found it very intimate and special. I actually came across a collector at one point who had a vast collection of sketches from Cebuano artists. I love Georgia O’Keefe’s early drawings, natural abstract forms in charcoal that almost came from another world. Most of all, I love Louise Bourgeois’ blue watercolors. She did them when she was 90 years old - with wonderful fragility and softness. I love the little world I made for myself, and I have always wanted to share it with others. I love it when writing informs my drawing. I write in my diary every day with an excess of emotion. My psychologist once used a glass of water overflowing as an analogy for trauma. The water spilled all over the floor and it was the perfect example of how I felt. Sometimes in life, we lose our rhythm and our flow. I find drawing to be a balancing act, where one’s self is centered like a part that is misplaced. I spin my web into spirals that create shadows, the shadows of dreams and memory.
WRITTEN BY CHRISTIAN RAY VILLANUEVA