Where There is No Gift, There is No Art
In April 2022, during the Tomb Sweeping Festival long weekend, I went on an artist date - it’s something I do regularly. Inspired by Julia Cameron’s idea from her book, The Artist’s Way, I spend time by myself doing things that are fun, to reignite and rekindle the love for my artist within. I believe that when you’re having fun, doing things that bring joy in your life, and making things that you once made as a child refreshes your creativity, gets you in the flow, and rejuvenates your spirits. But on this artist date, I felt disenchanted with my creative output. I wasn’t excited about my current work. Though I was inspired by many new things, new artists, new ideas, I wasn’t thrilled with what I was making. I’m not good enough, I thought.
After my artist date, on my way home, my phone vibrated, and there was a message from the wife of my best friend.
“Hey Afzal, we’re at the point of choosing art for our new home and thought of you immediately!”
I love how life works, just when you lose hope, the universe presents a surprise. It can be a gift, I thought.
Almost a decade ago, I hit rock bottom, it was so bad that I was suicidal. And it didn’t help that everyone around me kept reminding me how shitty my life was. Everyone except my best friend. “Come stay with us,” he said over the phone, “and you’ll get to meet the boys too, they’re almost five.”
The next day, I got on the plane and arrived in Vancouver. I remember it was raining, my sadness was deep, and I wished the plane had crashed. But when I reached their home, two little boys came running, looked at me with eyes wide open, and smiled. They were twins, Omar and Kayvaan. I vividly remember that moment, because something deep inside of me cracked. It was like the first beam of light entered the darkness, and that was the beginning of my life changing, and I didn’t even know.
During my depressive episodes, I woke up late and stayed in bed for hours, reminiscing about the old days when life was great and believing that those days would never return. But when I moved to Vancouver, I didn’t have the luxury to stay depressed because every morning, the boys came into my room and jumped on my bed. They took me out of my comfort zone and then one day I noticed that I was jumping with them. After a few weeks, the boys and I got on our bicycles and explored the wilderness around us, we played with water guns, and even spotted a black bear eating wild raspberries with her cubs. Then one day I woke up and caught myself smiling. That was when I knew that my life had changed. I felt the happiness within, and it was all because of Omar and Kayvaan.
I should make portraits for them, I thought. So I started working on the idea. I decided that I would use their faces from the same time when I first met them, just before they turned five. So I would create five portraits for each of them. The two sets of portraits would be connected to each other, yet they would stand alone, so that my friends could display them based on the layout of their new home. If they decided to put them up as a set of ten portraits, I could print them on small canvases, or if they decided to pick only a few, I could blow them up. The possibilities were endless.
This would be the perfect gift, I thought, to show my gratitude for what they did for me, and how they changed my life. Forever.
This was such an amazing process for me. One of my inspirations came from Andy Warhol’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe, where he used the same face but painted them in different colors. The style of his portraits were same, but the colors were different.
I decided to use the same image of the boys, but unlike Andy Warhol, I would paint them in different styles.
The colors and patterns of each portrait of Omar and Kayvaan were inspired by the works of various artists like Cooper & Gorfer, Aline Smithson, and Sandrine Dulermo & Michael Labica. I took the elements from their creative work and used Artificial Intelligence to mix them up in the creation of these new portraits. I loved this process so much because while I took each step, I discovered the emergence of my own style, and especially because this creative process was so much fun and brought so much happiness into my life, it reminded me of the time when I was with Omar and Kayvaan, jumping on the bed, splashing water on each other, and cycling in the wilderness. It was the same kind of happiness. And I’m grateful I was able to relive those precious moments.
Here’s my completed work, along with the images that inspired me to create these portraits. My new work is called:
King Kayvaan & Omar the Great
The first portraits in this series were inspired by Cooper & Gorfer’s project, I Know Not These My Hands.
These portraits were inspired by Aline Smithson’s series, Revisiting Beauty.
These portraits were inspired by Cooper & Gorfer’s work, Niza and the Animals, 2015.
These portraits were inspired by Sandrine Dulermo & Michael Labica’s editorial, Floral Fantasy for Glamour Italia.
These portraits were inspired by Aline Smithson’s series, Fugue State.
King Kayvaan & Omar the Great
This post was inspired by one of my favorite authors, Austin Kleon, a writer who draws. This whole experience and my creative process of making this gift can be summed up by what he wrote in his book, Keep Going - 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad:
“We all go through cycles of disenchantment and re-enchantment with our work. When you feel as though you’ve lost your gift, the quickest way to recover is to step outside the marketplace and make gifts. Making gifts puts us in touch with our gifts.”
Trust me, it’s one of the best things you can do for your creativity. Don’t just take, give. Now think, what kind of gift can you make for someone you love?
P.S. Let me know which portraits are your favorite, in the comments below.
