Be Yourself

"Your purpose, you might know that you want to be a painter, but finding your voice as a painter is not easy. It's a process of cultivation, and that process of cultivating yourself as a human being involves all the things we need to cultivate, like sensitivity, consciousness, a sense of beauty, and then going deep inside to see what the soil is, what's inside of you, and then putting that out over and over again. A lot of times, when you have a unique voice, you're going to be rejected because what we're taught is basically to make things as a product. Marketing yourself and finding a niche is different from finding your voice, and the voice is something no one can ever take away from you. It's a deep cultivation. As a commercial director, I found a voice, I found a style, but in commercials it becomes so much more about following something that's already preset. That was a very tricky period for me because I felt like my voice was being shut down, curtailed, lessened. But once you get it, once you get your destiny and your voice, you have it, and no one can take it away from you."