Art Battle Phoenix

I had the honor to be invited to participate in an Art Battle Phoenix event last February. Art Battle, just like the name mentions it is a painting battle between artist. It took me a while to digest the term battle in the art world, since, I believe, we artist do not compete each other to be the best, but rather, we compete with ourselves to became every day a better artist.

Another interesting thing about the Art Battle event was that we only had 20 minutes to complete a painting. Let's be honest, this does not happen in a day to day basis. I personally take a whole day to complete a painting, therefore, 20 minutes was a real challenge. Similarly, I was limited to the tools I could use during the battle. My creations are very geometric, straight lines and shapes, and for the reason I use rulers and masking tape in order to achieve the desire geometry. I of course, was not allowed to use this tools, so I needed to somehow achieve the same style without those tools. 

I practiced at home and was trying to come up with a concept, maybe a portrait, an animal, or a landscape, I was thinking I could do something that everyone could recognize rather that the geometric abstract paintings that I do. Soon, I become aware that I had to stay true to my style even if it was not something that everyone could relate or recognize. I decided that once there, I was going to let myself go and paint whatever the moment would dictate me, and so I did. 

And so the 20 minutes came by, I can not believe how fast time moves while you are under pressure and also doing what you like. I came up with an abstract painting, with bright shape colors and lines. I did not moved to the second round, but was very satisfy with the results. I was not worry about the fact that I did not moved forward in the battle, and question myself why I was not disappointed or sad, and soon came up with the answer: when you love what you do and you do it with passion and like the results, then you are already a winner. It was a fun night!