Attempting to Become Artsy Fartsy Again

When I headed off travelling back in 2001 I had with me a big bag of art supplies that I proceeded to carry around the world with me. Twice. They were heavy, bulky and did I use them? Hell no. I decided I needed to accept that I would probably never actually use them and decided to say goodbye to my neglected, dusty, stowaway art supplies in December. I donated them to a charity shop and rejoiced at the extra space in my backpack.

Well a couple days ago I found myself inside an art supplies store. I probably never should have darkened its doorstep because I know what I’m like. But I can’t resist them and once I got inside and saw how cheap everything was, well it was game over. Now I am the proud owner of about 20 tubes of oil paint, paintbrushes, turpentine, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, a sketch pad, canvases, and a palette. I even bought a plastic toolbox type thing to put them all in. Damn.

So now I have a heavy, bulky purple plastic box of art supplies that I really hope I use more than once or twice. Fortunately, in Beijing there’s inspiration everywhere and it seems like a pretty artsy place. I’ve been hanging out with a couple I met in The Philippines who are really into art and tagging along with them to meetups with local artists, galleries and stuff like that.

We went out to dinner with a Japanese artist living here, headed out to 798, a collection of galleries on the outskirts of Beijing, and went to a presentation of artsy types called Pecha Kucha. We even managed to accidentally catch the tail end of a Chinese opera and I don’t think my eardrums will ever forgive me for it. Holy crap it was high pitched. I didn’t know that noises like that existed.

My excuse in the past was that I never had time to draw and paint. Well now time is one thing I have plenty of so if those art supplies find themselves on another journey around the world without leaving the confines of the purple box, I’ll be really annoyed.