rodrigo bardin’s links

art: colorida.art chasing shadows

web: rodrigobardin.xyz

social: twitter/x instagram

session breakdown

00:45 — introducing imprints artist features

01:50 — welcome rodrigo + reflect on the past year

11:38 — how rodrigo categorizes his work + what he wants to be known for

19:30 — rodrigo’s approach to photography + how colorida is a step in a new direction

32:12 — exploring the traumatic experience that catalyzed rodrigo’s art form

43:45 — the journey to colorida

54:55 — the series structure of colorida, 1/1s, edition,

56:13 — understanding the why behind rodrigo’s presentation of colorida

01:10:45 — colorida’s prints and book

01:16:15 — where rodrigo’s headed next

01:22:30 — [p]plane. #32 giveaway

01:24:00 — audience q&a

01:27:22 — rapid question round + outro

it’s crucial in moments of stress and anxiety induced worry babble to take control of the narrative. rather than worrying about where you’re headed, take a deep breath and look where you want to go.

read the full post: https://mbranson.substack.com/p/look-where-you-want-to-go

when it comes to inspiration, i feel like we spend a lot of time waiting for lightning to strike. for conditions to be just right. for everything to be in its place (including the planets all in a line). when, in reality, inspiration comes in fits and spurts. most often once you’ve already done the hard part and showed up despite not having a grand inspiration wave to ride in on.

read the full post: https://mbranson.substack.com/p/stop-waiting-for-inspiration

a large part of my art process includes sketching. i often mean this as physical sketching, with graphite on paper, though at times i’ll go straight into a program like procreate and get right into making a piece digitally. i find this digital first approach is rarer for me; the analog-time-off-a-device plays a large part in the creation of an artwork and/or a series concept.

i found myself wondering why this is recently... https://mbranson.substack.com/p/to-sketch

it's super common in today’s world to be bombarded with options. when you could do this, be that or live there, how the eff do you home in on what to choose?

well, you listen to your gut. and, in order to hear it, you go a step beyond periodically drowning out the noise and choose to fully amplify the silence.

stillness. a reminder to find yourself among the many.

how? here’s a list of my five go to practices…

turn all of your notifications off. even the ones for your day job (bananas, i know).

keep your devices out of the bedroom. this includes, and especially means, your phone-that-you-use-as-an-alarm-clock. just stop. get a manual one. put your phone in the next room (and, if you live in a smol space, that means out of reach of your bed.)

carve out an hour of your day where you do something just for you. reading, drawing, writing, listening to music, staring at the horizon line. it doesn’t matter, just create that time and protect it.

try out meditation. start with 5 minutes, explore all the available apps, have fun with it. i personally use headspace and have been on an on/off journey with meditation for ~8 years. it’s been just what i needed and it’s also not been a cure all. the thing i’ve learned from it? everything you need you already have.

make one day of your week an internet free day. no texts, no email, no social media, no non-sense. you’ll be surprised what this forces you to prioritize + how you figure out ways to set you and your people up for success without the internet at your fingertips.

i’ll be candid, that last one is tough. it’s no longer common in society to be fully separate or alone. even when quarantined during the depths of the pandemic we were, and have been, alone together.

i struggle with taking a tech free day every sunday. when i’m meant to be offline i inevitably fall into a trap of wanting to know what’s happening. how do i overcome the urge not to look or engage? well, sometimes i don’t. this past weekend is a great example. i was in twitter + on my phone all weekend. (now you know, if you see me on a sunday in twitter replies, feel free to ask me wtf i’m doing there. 👀 😂)

in retrospect i chalk this up to stress. when i’m feeling it more than usual, my phone boundaries + internet use are the first things to go out the window. normally i’d have this all accounted for, with tweets scheduled and inboxes managed. that all fell down this time + by the time sunday rolled around, not only was i unprepared to take the day offline, i felt i couldn’t. that, in and of itself, is a glaring red flag for me.

we should all feel we can take the time and space to be away from it all. if anything, slowing down ensures we’ll be better able to speed up when it’s time.

when i’m fully engaged in the practices mentioned above, i’m my most creative. my most calm. my most present. in the end that’s all i hope for all of us.

here’s a peek at a piece i’ve just finished, you may recognize it from a sketchbook shot i shared a few posts back. it’s gone through some iterations, but i feel like where it landed is an embodiment of this journey we’re all on. pushing, pulling, ebbing, flooding. finding our way together and on our own.

to kick things off this week, i want to give a shout out to shillr and the unfold gallery. they included my art on the streets of nyc last week! seeing a video of resonance, iii. sitting alongside radio city was a surreal treat, here’s a still.

thanks to their teams for doing what they do + doing it so well. providing exhibition materials free of charge to each curated artist of last week’s mobile galleries is a beautiful thing to see, let alone get to be apart of. be sure to check out both teams!

curiosity as the canvas.

i used to take apart old electronic devices, phones, calculators, those little memo assistants from the ‘90s. my family would deposit them into my 7 year-old hands and i’d set to work deconstructing them with my set of mini tools from a rocking junior toolbox i’d cart around.

i’d take the object and strip it down part by part until i had a pile of curiosities. some things i’d recognize, others were often new to me. i’d run to my grandpa who’d be working away in his garage workshop to ask what this or that was and what it was for.

to me, he’s still the handiest human around and could answer my questions +90% of the time. the other ~10% i’d make up a use and incorporate the found part into whatever game i was playing at the time. (pretty sure at one point i used a motherboard as a spatula in the mud pie kitchen i had set up in the backyard.)

when i look back on those memories i realize that making art feels like this to me. it goes beyond that initial sense of play to curiosity and intrigue, to become a discovery of how something can be a bridge to both the unknown and something new.

curiosity: a strong desire to know or learn something. — oxford languages

most times i’ll start with a medium because i’m curious about the how of it. how do i technically do x? how can i reverse engineer my way to z?

in each case i find that i want to use a given tool to understand why i feel a thing in the first place. i want to know if other people feel it too.

this is the ultimate beauty of art. taking intuition past the point of how to eventually arrive at why, and, push on to if.

so much of art is caught up in how or why something is made. i find i’m most energized when i experience an artwork and forget about the medium entirely, when my senses are caught up in a dance with my mind, forgetting about the here and now while being ironically, wholly, caught in the present moment.

it’s after i experience artwork this way that i dive in with that 7 year-old brain, right back to wanting to understand the how, so that maybe i can put my spin on the why and, that feeling i’m experiencing, too.

said another way, i approach art as one large, shared project. one where we all have a unique perspective with which to contribute to the shared canvas. our world.

we’re ultimately on a shared journey, a journey strengthened by the unique voice with which we each wield our tools. i’m forever captivated by why we humans do what we do.

with my art i will continue to ask the question, do you feel things the same way i do?

notes, tweets + bluesky.

speaking of curious, i’ve found myself dabbling across social media lines these past few days. i’m trying out notes here on substack (see above) and received an invite to bluesky — find me there as @mbranson.bsky.social.

it’s been years since i was spread across multiple social media profiles and i can already feel my skin itch with anxiety. 👀 😂

i’ll be trialing out each for the foreseeable future, so if you’re there too, give a shout. you can watch me flail around as i try to make sense of how to present my art + thoughts in multiple places. 🍿

if you prefer to keep it steady and weekly, this is the best place to be. thanks for being here. please hit the 🖤 and help others discover my writing + art. thank you for reading and / or listening this week.

for the second time in my life i find myself living on an island.

is this the byproduct of a wanderlust spirit; the need for a shake up; an attempt to answer questions equal parts practical + fantastical?

simply put, yes. yes to it all.

welcome back to imprints and to wednesday. i’ve been tucking into some lingering sketches and creating new art this past week, i want to share what it’s all about. let’s get into it…

this time on island is different than my residency in the past, if not due to the geographic disparity — one being a frozen tundra, the other being a lush jungle — then because of the questions i find myself asking. intriguingly it’s not the questions that are different, it’s how i’m answering them this time around.

i had no notion of being an artist when i was on ice. taking photos was something i did naturally and there were times on my days off when i’d wander around mcmurdo station + the ross island surrounds looking for compositions without knowing this was what i was up to. i’ve always been a lover of light, angles + unexpected forms. so now being in hawaii, armed with a creative toolbox formed over the past decade, i find myself processing more intentionally, more voraciously.

there was an natural pause after arriving here, an overwhelm of senses that always accompanies the first days and weeks in a new place. as time has marched and i’ve settled into routine i find myself articulating my observations through imperfect lines and stark, open, abrupt space. the more i pause to look around the more i’m recognizing that what i’m observing goes beyond the classic wherever you go, there you are to more of a wherever you are, there you’ve been.

it’s the distillation of experience down to base commonalities that seems to be manifesting this for me. it’s one thing to compare island life of the warmer climes to itself: sandy beaches, small populations, access to goods. it’s another to take two islands in two starkly opposed climates, one surrounded by the warm pacific ocean, the other surrounded by the frozen antarctic sea ice + the polar plateau, and analyze the uncanny ways in which they both make you feel.

apart from being overwhelming grateful that i’m even able to strike such a comparison, the predominant feelings are chaos + calm. ever present and fully complimentary of one another.

i attribute this to the profound presence in both places of elements in equal parts.

* immense water → whether frozen or liquid, it’s always flowing.

* solid earth → formed of volcanoes ever present to your daily line of sight.

* perpetual fire → in the sky, reflected on water, sand, moon and ice.

* whipping wind → present + persistent, seemingly pushing the days along as it molds and forms the clouds overhead.

adjacent to these forces, it’s the unseen currents integral to air + sea that seem to have had, and are currently having, the most profound affect on me. on a still day the ocean keeps pulsing in the bay. on a blustery one, the swell may be forgiving enough for a peaceful float on the surface. the ebb + flood juxtaposition is providing me with insight i didn’t know i was after. helping me to see that this beautiful balance is always there, even in those places that are more temperate.

this island is a cacophony of sound + the previous island was nestled among the earth’s quietest place. the shock to the system that is anything in the extreme serves as a powerful palette cleanser, forcing eyes open to the subtle beauty that’s always there. after this exposure to a spectrums end, i find myself once again aware of the need for that very balance mentioned above.

cheeky, isn’t it? this duality, it’s ever present. it’s ironic how as soon as i tune back into it, any notion of questions fade.

there lies only beauty at the midpoint of chaos + peace.

the pieces i’m creating and releasing of late are all born of this journey. the undercurrents archetype is a beacon in a time of unknown. a reminder that it’s okay not to know. i have no idea how many pieces will come of this creative spell, let’s find out together.

if you enjoyed this, please hit the 🖤 and help others discover my writing + art. thank you for reading and / or listening this week.

let’s flashback a bit. it’s 2004 and i’m about to graduate from high school. i have plans to head off to the pacific northwest to pursue a career as a firefighter/paramedic. in typical teacher’s pet fashion i head to each of my favorite teachers from over the years to say goodbye and offer my yearbook for signing. one such encounter stands out more than the rest.

it’s a fascinating thing, making art. if not for watching what comes out of your own mind take shape, then for recognizing how many rules we apply to it. there was a time before people used canvases, before there was an expectation for framing + hanging artwork. before people put a label on everything created in an effort to lay claim or take ownership of a thing.

there was a time when the perception of creation was limitless.

i believe for artists there is an ongoing struggle to create outside of, and despite, the expectations of others. most days it can be enough to get out of your own way and show up to create something, anything. add to that imaginary wall the thoughts, perceptions, convictions of a loud mass and you have a recipe for getting stuck.

so how do i navigate this perception mess and keep creating?

i make up some rules.

i’ve recognized that applying some rules to the creative process can unwittingly unlock a flood of inspiration and momentum. ironic, right?

whether it be canvas size, color palette, series theme, medium type, etc…when i find the constraints of external voices pounding in my ears like the surf on a big day i, take a deep breath and, choose one rule. or guideline, if you will. by establishing a starting point i’m able to let go of perceived expectations and, once again, get going.

my most frequent ally in this creative dance of getting on with it is none other than, the grid.

a network of uniformly spaced horizontal and perpendicular lines (as for locating points on a map) — grid, merriam-webster

why the grid? well, to start, they are literal guidelines. as highlighted above, they are helpful for locating points, for way finding at a basic level. guard rails within which to feel grounded. they provide just enough structure to allow a burdened mind the space needed to unwind.

then there’s the urge to go wild, isn’t there something about overt structure that begets the desire to push boundaries? to stretch confines? to break the very rules just established?

finally, perhaps most importantly, they are beautiful. i find grids peaceful in that known surroundings sort of way. a familiar beauty, not unlike a landscape of your favorite horizon line. grids can be applied to, and underlie, every perspective and structure we encounter. the very cells we’re comprised of being a magnificent example of this.

i personally feel in mainstream parlance grids get a bad name. associated with the rigid, cold, confines of urban structure and clinical lines. i challenge people to remember that constraints are what we make them.

what you make them. you get to choose.

rules are meant to be a guide. and grids, well, they’re meant to be broken…or, at the very least, appreciated.

if you enjoyed this, please hit the 🖤 and help others discover my writing + art. thank you for reading and / or listening this week.

sometimes one moment can take root in your mind and demand perpetual exploration. it shows up scattered across various future moments, mirroring + extending itself. evolving while staying entirely the same.