Playnting

“Playnting is visualising the rhythm of the internal world and external world through art.” 

That is how I define my art technique and philosophy. 

I ‘Playnt’ because I struggle to express myself through conventional means of talking and writing. Yet I understand how important it is to express oneself as communication is key for both internal and external understanding. 

Why do I keep differentiating the internal and external? 

Because I firmly believe all of us exist in between. 

We have an inner world and an external world which gets lost in translation when our options to express are limited or when we choose to limit them ourselves. We have the voice but we don’t know how to speak. We have bad thoughts we want to get rid of yet no outlet for release. As such everything gets bottled up with an impending outburst so to speak. That’s why I play the drums as it was that very dynamic outlet which calmed me down. 

But it wasn’t enough. I found a way to release yet not a way to reason nor explain said release. I did a lot of visual arts which could reason and explain my expression but it lacked the dynamism of my expression. 

That’s when I married my love for drumming and painting after witnessing Ushio Shinahara’s boxing paintings. In each and every punch are Shinohara’s fleeting yet powerful feelings and entirety of being visualised for all to see. The harder the punches the greater the splattered strokes. Shinohara’s dynamic movement adds further catharsis to his form as being visceral and therapeutic. With drumsticks I could achieve the same but taking a step further to not only create a visual narrative but an audible narrative too. As such I have created a musical and visual instrument of art; both in process and in the end product.

To truly appreciate my art you must experience the process and the final artwork. For it is in the music of the process, in all its order and chaos, and the visuals of the end, in all its order and chaos, that you gain true understanding and experience of who I am and hopefully who you are. My art form highlights the importance of both the journey and the destination which is a greater metaphor for life. 

Every step of our way. 

Every stroke that we make. 

Is just as important as our final destination/artwork. 

“Where words fail, ‘Playnting’ succeeds.”

It gives you greater options to express, either individually or in unison, how you feel and how you’ve been feeling up until that point in time, viscerally for communication to the external world and catharsis for the internal world. Basically you can express yourself as who you are and feel better afterwards with a bonus point of a beautiful piece of art that is a ‘photograph of your mind and soul’ reflected in your ‘Playnted’ canvas and drumsticks/hands/any other striking media. 

To me, Playnting is a multidimensional expression of my internal being in relation to my external being. 

What is art if it is not an expression at its most fundamental level. An expression which cannot be expressed purely through words, visuals or sounds separately - but can only be expressed in unison. 

Playnting is an expression of being. 

What inspires me to create is my very being. 

The being of the internal and the being of the external in harmony though perceived as discordance or discordance in harmony.

The expression of being is a process journeying from an internal point (being you) to an external point (being the world around you). Yet many of us suffer from how we can truly express ourselves. We can’t be who we want to be. We can’t be who we are. To remedy this I conceptualised Playnting as a multidimensional language of expression incorporating many aspects of the human condition. 

It’s the only way I can express to you who I am.

For I believe at our very core:

Who I am is who You are.

We are not so different.

Yet we still are.

I hope ‘Playnting’ becomes a language accessible and known to all so that we may communicate and enjoy expressing ourselves visually and musically as we create a multidimensional performance of visual arts and sound!