Catmasutra- Garden of Eden - Painting Exhibition

CATMASUTRA ~ The Garden of Eden
Online gallery :

Opening Reception:
15 February 7pm
@ café domus
124 Owen Road

(off Race Course Road in Little India)
http://www.yebber.com/review/cafe-domus/

Mon-Thurs: 7pm to 12 Mn
Fri, Sat, Eve of Public Holiday:
7pm to 3am
Sun & Weekday Public Holiday: Closed

Paintings will be displayed till 24 February 2008

The garden, as a symbol, has accumulated many meanings in its journey through the ages. If we dig deep enough, we may discover a natural affinity towards a garden and what it essentially means. It is a reflection of nature, albeit a tame and protected version. As only nature knows how, it soothes the soul and perhaps reminds us of a lost paradise, and in particular, the garden in Eden that we have been cast out of! Perhaps it's about us dreaming to return to the innocence of childhood, away from responsibilities and anxieties of modern life, to an eternal blissful present where everything is provided for, with no sense of time, birth, or death. And this idea of eternal present seems to suit the cat just perfectly, and hence, Catmasutra - The Garden of Eden!

This collection showcases the Catmasutra cat as an embodiment of innocence basking in the dreamy ambience of flowers, butterflies, water snakes, enchanted apples and mysterious cat women (The 'Eve's). There is an innocence of time and space that is loosely woven together with symbolic objects to capture the prime center out of which we become aware of our sensibilities. The paintings move us quizzically from Eve as a girl to a woman, the physicality of the cat to the different 'Eve's, the water snakes as temptations ("Love and Other Temptations" inspired by Klimt's Water Snakes), the "Age of Happiness" paired with poppy flowers, innocent desire with sunflowers ("Summer of Desire"), the tick-tock of whisperings in "In-between love" or an enchanted butterfly offering the much maligned apple in the "Apple of my Eye".

Catmasutra- Garden of Eden

CATMASUTRA ~ The Garden of Eden

14 - 24 Feb 2008
@ café domus, 124 Owen Road

Opening on Valentine's Day, Catmasutra presents Garden of Eden, an exhibition of new works that will leave traces of love, romance, desire, fantasy and temptation in your heart! Garden of Eden beckons us to explore more intimately the different stories we write ourselves in, the different seasons we experience in our lives, from spring to summer, autumn to winter. Life is never as serious as it should be - so take a bite, let yourself fall, indulge, find your favorite piece and say, "Be Mine!" Haha None better than the season of love to own a Catmasutra art piece!

Summer of Desire

“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”~James Dent

"Summer of Desire" is the perfect summer day, where spoilers come as disguises for something better. Haha Can you remember what its like? The freedom that comes as a great big open space, the wind on your face, the smell of freshly cut grass, the open sky with its entourage of puffy cotton balls floating in the sky? And sometimes, you just wonder how simple everything is. The lawn mower is out of order, but everything else is just as they should be!

"...the Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone - but never hustled” - Henry Brooks Adams.

Garden of Eden
"Images are the food of the soul. The reason to paint is to make tasty images for our souls to savor... The ever inexplicable, unresolvable mystery of the image is the source of magic and power in art... Art is not just an exercise in semantics or a tool of social criticism. It is a way to commune with mystery."~Marion Peck

Find out more @

CATMASUTRA ~ The Garden of Eden

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Catmasutra 101 @ cafe Domus

Across the universe, and here we are on a little island, in a little place, that shines from the inside. It is a strange sight indeed especially when you're looking in from the outside. A little shiny place in the midst of the quiet darkness of gloomy buildings, with motifs of butterflies hovering in between, grasping over the brightly lit flowers...


Outside, the street has given in to the tiredness. Foreign workers living in old shop houses, with laundry as flags of another existence. They are talking as we are. We talked about fashion in this shiny place. I wonder what they would be talking about. The conversation shifted to brand names that I've never heard before - Italian, Japanese maybe. It doesn't matter. These worlds are not foreign to us, those who are inside this shiny place. They are more of the same - lifestyle aspirations that don't mean anything more than what we already have.


We are more connected than we think we are. We are all responsible one way or another for all the sadness and happiness in this world. We are here, all the way from across the universe, on Planet Earth where the dinosaurs became extinct, where there were two world wars, where empires kept on rising and falling, where we destroy forests and trees, where animals are tortured and killed for fur and 'delicacies' we don't need, where 'livestock' are bred and slaughtered without dignity, for the loss of our sensibilities.

"We did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.

Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves."

It's hard to move in this great big web of artificiality, as consumers, isolated and made bit part to interests of business and profit-making. We divide our life into so many compartments that our vision becomes fragmented everywhere we look.

There is always insecurity that keeps us in line, makes us afraid to be as we truly are. But we know it's never really about the place we find ourselves in. It's always about the light we carry inside of us, the path we choose, the choices we make, moment by moment, person by person. The more we believe, the easier it is to let go. Got light?

Catmasutra 101 is the art of nine lives - knowing that you live to die, and die to live again and again, allowing us to rest in the mystery of life. That's why life is an adventure, however you look at it - you only have to choose.

"Know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness." ~ Andre Gide

Join the Joy Luck Club!

;)

Catmasutra 101 Painting Show!

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”
~ Albert Einstein

Seasons come and go. Of course, it's hard to use seasons to gauge the natural cycles of things especially in Singapore. The seasons we get are probably more or less of a range of conditions popularly described as Sunny, Fair, Hazy, Cloudy, Partly cloudy, Rain, Showers, Thunderstorm, Windy. Perhaps that's why we don't really pay attention to our natural cycles but get caught up by the unrelenting artificial (9 to 5 + OT) ones.

I remember studying in Canada where you feel the natural cycles instinctively. In the depth of winter, people are more moody. We rest and sleep more. We don't move that much, don't want to get out of the house. In Spring, we feel fresher, happier as if everything has been renewed. Even then, there is a joy when we recognize a change in seasons. We rejoice to see the first snow flakes, or the first glimpse of spring or summer. And we begin to tire in the middle as we grow in anticipation of the new season. These are the natural up-and-down and in-and-out cycles. Once we understand this natural rhythm, we will be more able to ride both phases. Some days we feel down and I think we should be entitled to enjoy feeling down... haha SO enjoy it and let it past into the next phase!

Perhaps a new year resolution should be to live more intuitively, to sense the different transitions in our life, to let go of things that we don't longer need, and to keep each day fresh and filled with wonder (like taking a ride into an unknown part of little India and experiencing the art of nine lives... and feeling the sudden irresistible urge to own a eyes-wide-shut, ear-to-ear-grin Catmasutra painting ;)

“Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life -
learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance
and play and work every day some.”
~ Robert Fulghum

Happy New year!

CATMASUTRA 101 -

5th - 2Oth JANUARY 2008
@ café domus
124 Owen Road

((off Race Course Road in Little India)
http://www.yebber.com/review/cafe-domus/

Sun - Thu: 7pm - 12MN
Fri, Sat & PH eve: 7pm - 3am
Closed: Mon & weekday PH

;)

Cats of the World

Three of my photos from the non-collectibles show are now on the walls of the 'Cats of the World' Exhibition, 1-15 August at The Moomba @ Level 2, 52A Circular Road. The exhibition aims to spread the message about the joys of our feline friends and that cats all over the world are the same - lovable and purrrrfect!

"Hutch" slacking while his partner Starsky is out galavanting. This is at the food mall at Bestway Building in the Central Business District Area. I have entire collections of these two cats, and they are one of my favs.

These are the new kids on the block (then anyway when this photo was taken). They appeared out of the blue one day and seems to be from the same litter. There was some upgrading work being done on the site (Hougang 24 Hour kopitiam), so the area was sealed up except for a little opening. That's their gateway to a haven (during the night) as they got total privacy!


This old fella is one of my favs as well. Very calm and confident with people. Obviously the resident cat at the food place (good teochew porridge) around Kovan. "Worldly wisdom" is written all over those eyes! A true catmasutra cat! The above three photos are for sale and all proceeds will go the Cat Welfare Society...

"Cats add a lot of character to their environment," said Dawn Kua, Director of Operations at CWS. "They are neglected and abandoned here in Singapore."

They really shouldn't be. CWS has been trying hard to take care of these strays and one of the many problems they face are people who see the cats as pests! If we do not have compassion for these strays, at least, don't deny them from people who have...

One of the clips from the Non-collectibles exhibition, with special thanks to Concave Scream for their music...

Catmasutra at Culture by the Bay Arts Festival

Been busy, busy, busy... preparing for the Culture by the Bay Arts Fair. It's this Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 6pm at the Asian Civilizations Museum grounds. I was thinking how to display the Catmasutra paintings and prints in an open booth with no walls or pillars except 1 table and 2 chairs...!??? I went searching everywhere and bought some stuff to improvise, and I think I'll probably have to bring my 2 very well-worn and paint-stained easels as well. Then what about a banner or a signboard? I was considering different options - print a banner at Bras Brasah, or just paint the words on a board or something... then came a big IDEA! Paint another Catmasutra painting with a signboard in it wahahaha! Once I decided on this, I needed a concept ... and since the fair is out in the open, I thought I'll paint something "cooling" like an old-fashioned ceiling fan haha . Of course, the Catmasutra cat Halo would be the first to take advantage of this... by sleeping on it! So it will be an elevated view looking directly at the signboard - the traditional one with black wood and golden lettering (which I like) - and behind the board is the main hall and the ceiling fan and of course, the cat haha! I'll probably put this on the easel so that nobody misses the Catmasutra booth!

Also, I have stuff like postcards and coasters, mainly from the Catmasutra II and a few from the first Catmasutra exhibition. My place is actually filling up with paintings now and it's bright and cheerful - imagine catmasutra paintings hanging from wall to wall everywhere you turn;) Honestly, it's a bitter sweet feeling when the paintings get sold. It's fantastic, of course, that people appreciate your work and buy them - that really encourages you and sustains you as an artist; the sad part is of course, when they get sold, you're really selling something that you have become very attached to. Maybe prints is the solution to solving some of the heartache although nothing beats the original, haha. I have passed some of my newer works and borrowed a few that my friends bought (so nice to see the originals again, tks guys!) to Art Prints Asia and this guy put them through hi-res scanning and viola! catmasutra art prints! I asked him to give a discount for the Culture by the Bay Arts Fair, and it's better than I hoped for! He's giving a discount and a free upsize!! So if you buy A4, you get A3 and so on... Gotta sleep zzzZZZZ Hope to see you at the fair!!

;)

Catmasutra - Got Light?

It was supposed to be of Halo but I chose Angel instead. After all, he's an angel and light is his main resource haha. Angel is a rascal of a cat but he has enough light and humor to see him through. So with him, I can be more experimental! Anyway, this will be his last stick. He's quitting. I'm probably gonna add a big fat apple floating somewhere representing forbidden pleasures. Symbolically, this is about weighing the odds between momentary pleasure and true happiness. Here it is! "Got Light?" a new quirky Catmasutra painting starring Angel, contemplating on the larger issue between temporary pleasures and true happiness. I read somewhere that we're all a contagion, and to a degree, it's true and we're not even sure how our words or actions affect or touch the lives of others. We can be many things to different people, a virus to some, a cure to others, or just a real pain-in-the ass! A good movie about that is probably "Crash", which indicates how connected we all are - just that we don't exactly see how the dots connect. Imagine - for a moment - that you can see all the dots and know exactly what the matrix is! (Ok I just saw Matrix again last night - the first one is still as good as ever). That would be pure enlightenment...Remember, it's not the spoon that bends...

;)

Catmasutra @ Culture By The Bay Arts Fair

Catmasutra will be at Culture By The Bay Arts Fair! Hop over to the Asian Civilisations Museum grounds and soak in the creative atmosphere at the two-day Arts Fair. Go home with a rare find or two, especially Catmasutra paintings and limited merchandise!! Take a sneak peak on what's coming up for Catmasutra IV, and I'm trying to get some high quality prints of past works for the event as well.

When *28-29 July 2007,
Saturday & Sunday
11am to 6 pm *

Where * Asian Civilisations Museum Grounds *

Find out more about the event...

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