Gum Leaf Study #3 Drawing

G’day, I am Pilar and thanks for coming to hang out. Sprouting in Sydney, Australia I grow up in a very culturally diverse family. My mother Polish, my dad from the Philippines, a child of Australia. After having studied design at University of New South Wales, I took my skills and loves to New York where I lived and worked for over 5 years. As the years, the hours, the moments went by the buildings got too high, my skin felt too little sun and I missed the vivid blues and green of home. So I came home to Sydney, where now I am creating from my roots on sunburnt soil and experiencing my homeland with wide eyes. From a young age creativity was always something that had existed in my life. My grandfather carving leather, my father doodling, my mum crocheting late into the night. Though never something to be celebrated or overtly acknowledged, art just lived in our home. As a child I liked to draw, and the inspirations I took those decades ago have not much changed; my surroundings, imagined happenings and made up creatures. With the same core inspirations, it is the plethora of life, it’s fleeting experiences and the growth of a soul that has taken these and developed them into what my hands create today. I still like to draw, or create from what’s around me. I live in the ‘burbs of Sydney and there is so much inspiration to be found walking these quiet, and usually uneventful suburban streets. The slower nature of the ‘burbs allows us time to take in what’s around. The constant juxtaposition of human constructions speckled with native and introduced fauna and flora is 24hr performance. These small interactions between all of an areas inhabitants, not only human, is an ongoing and changing dialogue that is so enthralling to be a part of. A lot of my work captures these small snapshots, the minor occurrences or the quiet moments happening just out of our daily periphery. Or sometimes they are the result of small amusing imaginings of what nature gets up to whilst we aren’t looking. I guarantee, if you walk your street with a slightly slower step and wide eyes, there is a world you will instantly be a part of that you never noticed existed.  Primarily I illustrate with gouache, watercolour and black pigment marker. There is a captivating dichotomy between these materials, the fluidity of watered down gouache and the stark and solid permanency of the pigment marker.