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This work by Pedro Domnguez Caballero de Rodas, Jose Jaime Martin and Carmen Rio is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

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My Painting, Inspiration, and Art Evolution 1 2 3 Hi! Im Soniei, and Im an artist (full time), and I just want to talk about where I get my inspiration for my art. First of all, Ive always been interested in how to calm my mind, body and soul since I was early in my teens. I was really interested in psychology and spirituality: every subject that really had to do with releasing anxiety or other negative emotions. In university my major was psychology, but I also dabbled in philosophy and world religions. My interest in these subjects, where the subject of taking anxiety and how to calm the mind is definitely my number-one influence on the art that I create today. The path that actually led me to becoming an artist was: Several years ago I had a job working in computers, and it was such a stressful job. The work environment was so toxic. I had a boss that was very negative. She was actually the most frustrated person that I have ever met in my entire life. But anyway, I had to find a way to release my stress and my anxiety after my day at work, and try to find some kind of balance, because I could feel the stress affectingalmost infectingmy body and my mood. So I started practicing zen Simply put, zen . is the practice of Japanese calligraphy focusing on emptying the mind. And thats a very simple simple simple definition. Its very relaxing. It was very therapeutic for me. I loved it so much that I decided to quit my stressful job before I completely lost my mind. I mean, I was going to lose my mind. It just wasnt the place for me anymore. So to make a long story short, I became an artist, which was a dream of mine since I wasI think I was fourthat I can remember. 24

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And I focused, and Im still focusing, on art that makes me feel calm, almost spiritual. I also lived in Japan several years ago, and I bring a lot of my experience from there into my paintings. I do a lot of bamboo paintings, cherry blossoms, orchids; sometimes I paint Mount Fuji (oh, I love Mount Fuji!), the geishas, abstract art with Japanese characters. You can definitely see most of these subjects in traditional Japanese paintings, but I definitely put a contemporary twist to the art. And just recently I started painting paintings with tulips, and butterflies, and dragonflies, ladybugsI thinkflowing grass and the sky. Those paintings come from me daydreaming about what my heaven on earth would be. And if I could do anything in the world from most of my days, I think I would just lay in the grass, and look at flowers and be still. I think theres a lot of Eckhart Tolle smothered in my paintings. And sometimes my heaven on earth would be something more exciting. And that would come through in my paintings. It just depends on the day, I guess. And when it comes to choosing colors for my paintings, some days I want bold colors; some days I just want to use neutral colors. But the colors I chose for a painting has to match myself at that specific moment. I cant really explain it. I guess the best way to explain it would be: Every day, every moment, theres a color that just matches my mooddoes that make sense?a color that I just want to surround myself with. Oh Jeez! It is really hard for me to explain. This is why its really hard for me to explain to people why I dont do custom paintings anymore. I just dont feel happy or rewarded when Im creating a painting that doesnt exactly match me at that moment. I dont know if this makes sense, but at least I try to explain it. Oh Jeez! I love being an artist! I really really do. Oh, I hate being in front of the camera! Oh! Phew!