Page 12 - Art Reveal no8

12 Art Reveal Magazine

When, how and why started your art dreams in your art practice.
practice?
This is much connected to intuition, te-
According to my dad (RIP) I was only lepathy, which seems to develop to higher
three when I wanted a pencil from my dad levels as I get older and get more aware
when i saw him drawing on the table. My about those talents. I have been an athe-
dad started as a self-taught artist, then by ist for 37 years, and have spent ten years
correspondence, and then later , when I of my life in India as such. Just imagine…
was barely nine, he took me and my eldest an atheist in a country with thousands of
sister to the Academy of fine Arts Sunday gods and demigods. It was but in 2005
lessons (4 hours in the morning and that when I took my first San Pedro (a mes-
for four years!) caline cactus available in Bolivia, Peru,
Chile, and Argentina) potion, alone in a
What is your creative process like? hotel. The first time alone, and eating it
instead of drinking, as there was no way
Oh, that is a difficult one. I think anything of boiling it in my room. My first visions
can trigger off a bulk load of ideas. Some- were impressive and I tried to make draw-
times I bottle them up, sometimes I set ings, sketches in which I wanted to con-
myself at the table and try to work out an trol the colour choosing (red only) but I
idea I had the month before or just after failed in controlling that. My latest works
I had a vision or a dream. Sometimes it have been made this year in Peru. Three
is the jitterbug in me, the restlessness that months before I was told my mum was di-
makes me want to create. Compulsion, if I agnosed with an aggressive breast tumor,
do not have canvas, paper or a brush. I am I had a dream of how my mum stood by
super productive and I will seek the means (see it at www.saatchiart.com/art/Draw-
to express myself in any which way possi- ing-WATCH-OUT-MUM-FOR-THE-PA-
ble within the capacities I have in new or PER-SNAKE/26453/2http://www.saatch-
traditional media. I have traveled 30 years iart.com/Alann557675/view) my side,
and been to forty-two countries; now this and how a paper snake with jaguar spots
life is paying off in just picking from my moved toward us from a shelf filled with
baggage that I have carried with me for so erect phalli. My mum reached out to touch
long. Some things are created when they the snake, I screamed “NOOOOO” but it
need to be created. Like for installations was too late. The snake bit her in her fin-
or objet trouvé, I am collecting stuff I find gers, and I woke up. As a shaman (some
here and there on the streets in the nature believe I am one) I must interpret my own
and when the time is ripe, everything fits dreams and visions. I had many more; also
together like a jigsaw. I have lots of pre- after the first time in La Paz, I had sever-
monitions that make me make works as if al on the Island of the Sun, on the Lake
I pluck them from the air with my gut an- Titicaca. After that I could never return to
tennae. the atheist belief. I channel different en-
But basically, I just sit, retrieve a few lines tities and speak in tongues when I am on
or ideas from my head and let it run. I a high. Those trances (with San Pedro,
seem to have a natural talent for colors. I ayahuasca, marihuana, chicha de jorra
tap into previous lives. Yes, in my visions, (a fermented maize drink from the Incas),
I have been confirmed that I had several sometimes have been the root and cause to
in Central America. Once I asked Moth- make videos, songs, poetry, sketches, and
er Ayahuasca (the entheogenic vine from paintings.
the Amazon) why I should continue to
paint while I see the best and finest art- If you had an occupation outside of be-
work when I travel on her. She answered ing an artist, what would that be and
that it was my duty, my assignment to be a why?
storyteller through my artwork and that I
should continue to do so and paint. Throughout my whole life, always have
Tell us something about the lucid been connected to the arts, close to nature,
AMARU YAGE