ARBITRARY IDENTITY

I was approached by a coffee shop I frequent in the city where I live in Taiwan. After hashing out the details, I needed to come up with 13 paintings to hang for a couple of months and I decided that I would explore zodiac signs, plus one. At first, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to focus on the Greco-Babylonian star signs or the Chinese Schema or how to represent theme, as abstract representations or narrative tableaus. I even considered creating a new cycle of my own creatures or monsters for a zodiac, which I've actually done before. Eventually, I decided on doing it all, sort of. After all the secret to my creativity is to simply keep asking "Why not?!"

The Western zodiac based on star signs.

The Eastern Zodiac comprised of animals from an ancient story.

The Stars Aligned

In 2022, I kept a daily sketchbook wherein I drew faithfully every day. For certain days of the year I had pre-planned prompts, including both of the zodiac systems. For the Chinese System, I started on Chinese New Year and drew the animal from the previous year, the ox, then I proceeded to sketch a sign on the day that matched the number of the month– 2/2, 3/3, 4/4 etc. For the western zodiac, I more simply sketched them on the 15th of every month. Both sets were bound by the rules of my sketch book: only using my primary color colored pencils, pencils, or black ink pens, do them the day they were scheduled, and whatever arbitrary rule I had in place for the given day. Somewhere along the way, I decided I'd add the constraint that they all needed to be male.

I drew some at home alone, others out and about with friends, one I recall at a coffee shop, and I may have drawn one or two at church.

The only issues was the thirteenth painting that I honestly had to wait until I was done with nearly all of my core paintings to have any idea of what I wanted to do. And so, dear reader, shall you.

2022 Daily Sketchbook Chinese Zodiac

2022 Daily Sketchbook Western Zodiac

Mundane Providence

Inspired by drawings of sketchbooks past and seeing the threads of fate weave together into a throw rug of cosmic thoughts, I bought 13 matching frames and scores of sheets of paper. I blocked out my first painting, sketched, and did the line work. It then sat for a week or two on my painting table. Once I realized how fast approaching my deadline was for the hanging of my work, I found myself working morning, noon, and night in between my teaching job and design clients' projects. I admit now, while the last painting was indeed dry when it was hung, it was only barely so.