Renaissance Now: The Anti-Impressionism

At a certain point in time, we over analyzed technicality in art, so much so that artists were competing on who painted the best veins in all of oil painted pale flesh, had depressions over who had the sickest most accurate perspective drawings, who captured the light exactly how it looks to the molecule. Commercial home entertainment paintings for rich folks made lots of money back then, but all that saturation of money focused artistry made most of ‘making art’ into a flesh vein obsessed perspective mania light molecule painting competition. If the ‘judges’ of the ‘wall’ say your painting got some likes, your painting was hung a few inches higher than the others.

Perhaps that’s when some younger folks coming up that aligned with the spirit of Monet said, ‘Wait, who even owns this wall? Eff your platform and eff your wall too. Who is even funding this place. This is propaganda! God, art used to be fun and now the industry has sucked the joy out of it and no one seems to care about anything else!!!’

Then, this person opens the newspaper and sees that the ground breaking never before seen technology of Photography is available to the public. Wait, it can CAPTURE reality?! ‘NO! Why’s it gotta be now when it’s already hard to be an artist as it is!!!”. Now one must struggle with their own trajectory of life being dismantled, within a world that is shaking like there’s no tomorrow.

After spiraling endlessly, this person like Monet finds himself at 4PM on a Tuesday hung over, having eaten a ton of junk food, sick, miserable, and hopeless. He thinks about the world, the industry, that fucking WALL, and begins to spiral again. His spiral cycle continues until he’s so dehydrated from sobbing and jerking off that his mummy ass finally drinks a glass of cool clean water and finds what was missing in this state of full depletion - CLARITY.

He thinks: God! Why and how could I be so defeated?! Every step I took brought me here to draw. I did everything to have these tools, this skill, to know what I know now at this moment in time and culture for ART. I choose to paint. I WANT TO PAINT. Not because I want to show off how good I am technically, but to show what I SEE. What else am I going to do, and what else am I supposed to do? Art was never about any of this. It can’t be so that art can only represent what the eye sees. Art is a tool to understand, to share, to connect, to share a perspective unique yet relatable. I choose to find what is BEYOND. The spirit of the moment! The IMPRESSION!

Unknowingly, this man like Monet spreads his great spirit of bringing ART back to life and inspires others to create their own impressions of life that snowballs into a movement that makes history. Not by force, but by sheer magnetism in expression of his humanity. We prove to the rest of humanity that yet again our creativity cannot be bound.

I do not claim my article to be historically accurate, but I know you feel me.

I urge you to break out of the current conception of ‘good art’ defined by the industry. Art goes beyond the showmanship of a single artists technicality.

So back to the title. I will give you a hint of where you can find your first footsteps.

What is the spirit you feel right now from your perspective and in the time you live in? Remember Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wise words: ‘The riddle of the age has for each a private solution.’ Look around. We are plagued by IMPRESSIONS. Everything that is yelling at us is about giving a great impression with no real value underneath. The people who advertise an impression of themselves online who are completely different in person. Professionals dangling their resumes on their chests who hide the pain and suffering they have caused. Products that impress you to purchase and get hooked, only to lower the value as time goes on. All of this crap, for quick benefit.

I hope this description of the times of today excites you rather than discourage you. The implications I am making are crystal clear that we are at the precipice of needed change, and now you have the key to unlock it.

Free us from the oppression of the impression. You know deep inside that this isn’t it, and that you have something within you that you always wanted to express. Show it to us. Show it to the world! The world is practically begging for it!

Please show us that we are more than this. That our creativity yet again has no bounds.

I believe in you my friend! You have the future within you.

With love,

Sunmin

Great Excerpts #001

While I take my sweet time to finish some of my other articles, I wanted to share hopeful and inspiring findings in my daily life. I’ve recently had a flood of experiences getting to know the young future creatives that will take on the fate of our industry, the ones that one day will be our leaders. With recharged hope, I wanted to share something that would deeply help those youngins to take as armor into the unknowable new year.

When you are lost and looking for an answer in desperation, suddenly much magnetizes towards you with an answer. Folks like myself who inherently have less patience with stubborn opinions choose too hastily the first few offers thinking it is that light that was at the end of this long tunnel. Sometimes we choose the most polished looking answer not knowing the actual contents behind the patina! However if you calm your heart and take the time to entertain and lull on every answer, the consistent and genuine vibration of the truth answer will have already earned your trust without you knowing. This is how I found Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here is a short excerpt from the first few pages of his book “The Conduct of Life”.

Here was my question that was well stated in his book:

[…]But let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it. The Spartan, embodying his religion in his country, dies before its majesty without a question. […]Our Calvinists, in the last generation, had something of the same dignity. They felt that the weight of the Universe held them down to their place. What could they do? Wise men feel that there is something which cannot be talked or voted away, —a strap or belt which girds the world. […] The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense: “Whatever is fated, that will take place. The great immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed.”

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism. And, now and then, and amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in the Pistor even-Providence, which whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leaders and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.

It’s real funny that in the book Emerson offers the answer earlier than the question mentioned above:

In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immovable limitations.[…] After many experiments, we find that we must begin earlier,—at school. But the boys and girls are not docile; we can make nothing of them. We decide that they are not of good stock. We must begin our reform earlier still,—at generation: that is to say, there is Fate, or laws of the world.

But if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation understands itself. If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. This is true, and that other is true. But our geometry cannot span these extremes points, and reconcile them. What to do? By obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or if you will, pounding on each string, we learn at last its power. By the same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some reasonable hope of harmonizing them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solution. If one would study his own time, it must be by this method of taking up in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our scheme of human life, and by firmly stating all that is agreeable to experience on one, and doing the same justice to the opposing facts in the others, the true limitations will appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would be corrected, and a just balance would be made. [End of excerpt]

So there. Take it.

I found the answer to a happy fulfilling life, well, at least the formula for planting the seed of a happy fulfilling life. It was with Waldo lol, a life synchronized and reigned by reality where we truly are where you give love to every bit that comes across to you, unbothered by the exterior world. Find purpose by seeing how your natural talent that springs from genuine joy can serve the larger future of humanity. No need to start big. This can be in your craft or hobby at home, your industry, your friends, your family. The inertia of this positive movement will soon be felt in other areas of your life, lifting you up to even higher purposes and greater fulfillment. Then you will be somehow closer to the truth of reality than you were before. This is what I try to live by anyway.

Does this article give you a new context to the famous phrase and intellectual property Where is Waldo? in times like today? Okay I think I’ve written enough. To anyone who is facing a new life into the unknown, I hope that this message can stay with you when you need it.

Always,

Sunmin

MANIFESTO: Absolute hope for the industry

I have been wrestling my career for the past decade.

During those years, I’ve experienced many abnormal blessings. To start off, born randomly under South Korean parents who could afford my full college tuition allowed me to start from an extremely rare financial ‘Ground Zero’. Native-like fluency of both English and Korean gave me much advantage and confidence to learn, network and grow over the years with relative ease. Through the severe Korean art cram school pipeline I built foundational skills early, then got accepted to the first animation high school ever created in Korea. Great things came with graduating from Art Center college of Design, a school famous for its militant preparation towards employment. Just a 15 minute drive from school was Burbank, the central hub of the current animation industry. Working professionals taught classes in person because they lived so close by. I crossed paths with many of my favorite artists during college. Over the course of a decade, I’d created genuine friendships with good hearted solid minded folks, also artists, that I trust and attribute the great leaps towards my wellness. On top of all this, somehow I was at the right place at the right time and knew the right people to be on a stack of great career booster projects that have served me compounding benefits.

Perhaps to balance things out, I’ve also a great talent for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Over the course of 10 years, I would come across interactions stranger than fiction with people that can only be described as ‘cartoonishly malevolent’ from both industry folks I know well and, even crazier, folks that I’ve never even talked to once. I have been wrongly accused and rumored to have blacklisted fellow colleagues, been uncredited still to this day for an identical copy of my work advertised as their original, was the scape goat for a team-decision and took full blame only to be reported to the union by the artist angered, was once told ‘You know my name will be bigger on screen than yours?’ by a professional I’ve looked up to, got yelled at by a friend I hadn’t seen in years to take down a post, and even had a Director put me down to his famous friend Directors not because of the years of work that I had done was bad, but because I did not willingly walk into to his cage of lies. I had many sleepless nights crying, not being able to eat or drink. The incident that got me undeservingly reported to the union took me down to 87 pounds. I saw my ribs sticking out from my back and chest, and so cruelly I had told my team a day before it all happened that my grandmother that I loved so dearly had passed on the other side of the globe. And like it was all planned, whenever these things would happen, my trusting friends would be just out of the perimeters of involvement from the situation to come to my aid. Funny enough, if you know how to read between the lines, all of the frayed threads of evidence has been sitting continuing to fray online in clear view. Some, as a form of email sitting in your inbox.

And now, again, here it is the truest statement I can make: I have been wrestling my career for the past decade.

I’d tried to quit numerous times, and successfully ran away to pursue film school, attending for only a month and a half in 2019. Don’t worry. I got a great rebate.

I had my active moments, asking people, professionals, friends, mentors, tarot cards, mediums. Then eventually, I had my less active and observant moments of asking, the Quaran, New Testament, the Tanak, and in the same manner, authors of historical fiction and non fiction alike. And, I may have not gotten a clear cut answer, but touched upon a thread that allowed me to gently feel the answer from afar!

The answer to why this all happened to me? It was for you. Yes, YOU who is glazing your eyes on my words now. You, who is searching for answers just like I was. It was all to help guide you to a more sensical fulfilling career, to clear the path for you to get us back to what really made us pursue this profession in the first place. TO GIVE CHILDREN WONDER.

You could be a student hopefully wanting to be employed at any of these big companies, a professional perhaps that is thriving, or not, and most hopefully, you could be one of the people that had actively attempted to make my life miserable. If so, please do not be worried because this was initially for you.

Why? Because I am just as flawed as you. Through my own pains that fill the empty space of all what I’ve written so far, I had once been mentally ill, miserable, and felt competitive, self-consciousness, desperate to be seen, gossiped, wanting to fill a void with recognition, felt unworthy or even unqualified, and worst of all, felt jealousy for the things I did not yet work for. I understand the pain of the things life gives us and doesn’t and breaking the thought of what is ‘deserving’ for ourselves. Yet, I did not have it in me to contribute to the death ant spiral that creates new beginnings on its own to trap others into a scheme that takes all of us away from our creative work and happiness, even when it was so easy to explode. With that combination of what it feels like swallowing explosions, I started learning and growing. And guess what? I started realizing things, and found things about me like this great example: The work of mine that was near identically copied, in the process of comparing the two, I had realized that I’d never credited the character designs that I had dropped in that very painting. I was seeing things that I did not see before. In others, but more importantly in myself! You had unwittingly given me your pain as a curse, a bastard child you shoved off to me, but deep inside it was a gift. I nurtured that child you left me. A mirror of many sides to look at myself, even in angles I couldn’t see myself before.

So here is my conclusion. I forgive you, because the only way to do this is with you. We have been fighting petty fights at the cost of the careers of future artists and creatives. More importantly, we have been spoiling the grounds that is animation, a medium created to share imagination, joy and wonder, for what? For our own personal offense or defense, fame and fortune. We need to work THROUGH our flaws not USING our flaws towards what is really important: Not to rebuild, but to guide the current state that is the industry to a healthier future. I have my doors open as I’ve already told some of you. I intend to eventually get to you with my heart open, to discuss, to heal, and to grow together.

For the hopeful people looking up to a career worth cherishing, I declare my mission: I will continue to experience, digest, and absorb all the yins and yangs that my career throws at me so I can continue to reinvent myself. I will share a better way, a more efficient way, a truly enjoyable way for you to walk through and experience. Here for free, for all of you to see.

All I hope in return is that once you’ve walked through that way, that you share your findings with me.

With absolute hope from the industry.

• S