Marcos Chin

FIAT USA

I still have a moment of thrill when I see my work in public unexpectedly. I believe this a good sign because it means that I'm still engaged and excited by what I do. I remember years ago in Toronto, I walked by a local clothing store and saw a series of illustrated figures that I had done for a fashion magazine, enlarged, redrawn and traced (without permission) onto foam core, acting as a their display window. It was very comical to me because I was still young then (although I would argue that I am still young-ish now) having had recently graduated from art college with my nose to the computer screen, drawing pictures and disseminating them into the commercial world, not knowing who was looking at them, what they were thinking of, or if anyone was paying attention.

Part of me felt like a fraud, curious as to why my work was being published, and fearful of when my luck would run out. I would admit to having been self-deprecating, not so much now, but definitely growing up (the fat-fag jokes I endured for decades were probably the cause of this) and so the reverence that I kept for realistically drawn or painted work - the kinds of images that I loved, but could not create - became the measure of the worth for my pictures. Viewing my drawings alongside those photo realistic images transformed my own into childish marks, and made them less in some ways, or as one client put it, my illustrations were "a glorification of The Jetsons."

But this psychosis of mine existed in the past, and although I still sometimes feel unsure about whether the next mark that I make will be the right one, I have softened to the notion that these uneasy feelings come with Illustration as a practice, and so, I let them be, instead of allowing them to fracture my confidence. The brain and heart are very different, and just because one speaks louder than the other doesn't mean that one is more correct than the other. At the time, my feelings told me that my drawings was less than. It felt this way because I measured it against the realism of the pictures that I judged which were greater than my own. There is nothing wrong with comparing one's own work to someone else's; in truth, I believe it's important to do so as long as one understands the reasons behind why a particular piece of work holds meaning to oneself, and why it has garnered recognition from others (even if I might or might not agree with the opinions of the latter). Competition has always been an important factor within my upbringing. Knowing who is ahead and along side of me, keeps me moving forward. That said, the issue that I had for years was that I kept my focus too much on my position within the pack, rather than on the experience of running. And so many moments were spent and lost in the obsession of uncertainty about the quality of my work, rather than taking in a few breaths to record my achievements.

* The last photo contains the Fiat Ad (mine is on the bottom right entitled "Style"). I stumbled upon it while I was listening to Pandora radio. As you can see, my tunes are fully rooted in the 80s sans apology.