CREATE OR BE STIFLED
A creative journey on how ignoRANT came to be.
Finding a way to merge my art, music and poetry was the greatest dream I ever had since I was a child. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years trying to figure out how I was going to do that. Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts! Yes! As soon as I discovered that place back in Jamaica, I was like, that’s the college I will go to. I was going to become a poet, a painter, a singer and a psychologist using art as treatment. The psychology thing I figured I’d study after art school, but at least I’d get started on the art, music and poetry. Further research revealed that, at the time, I could only major in one, and maybe do an elective in the other. Wasn’t very good news to me. I literally flipped a coin to decide. Ok, I’ll study art and do piano as an elective at the school of music department, since I already started studying piano there while I was still in high school during the summers. Boom! Starting college was the single most exciting day of my life second to getting my acceptance letter.
Finally a place I’d feel belonged. You mean I get to study ART and MUSIC simultaneously at the same place? What?!! My excitement was soon curtailed as I got into my first semester when lectures of the courses in art I majored in started becoming confused that I was studying both and not knowing which one of the schools I attended. My interest in music started working against me on how “seriously I took studying art” and if I’m “sure this is really what I wanted to do”. I was told point blank told that I had to drop piano because it was conflicting with my studies and that I should choose an elective at the school of art. At one of my critiques, I was told by a lecturer “maybe if you spend more time doing your assignments than wasting your time singing with these Rasta people yuh will have better work. Do you want to be here Miss Jones?”. When I wasn’t in my dorm room doing assignments for art school, my time was spent performing at poetry events, singing back up for a few artists, attending music events and hanging out with my friends who were musicians who were studying at the school of music.
I realized that I was being asked directly and indirectly to choose, because people couldn’t understand that I could equally be interested in and do all these things. I was also told by someone close to me that I should major in Graphic Design because painters starve. I fucking hated studying graphic design. I started becoming jaded and felt stifled and suffocated. Shit, I even stopped going for a few years. I hated it for a while and was mostly miserable. The remainder of my studies felt dark, I immensely unhappy and felt unfulfilled and misguided. I learned all I could and did what I could to get through art school. After I graduated, I didn’t do anything visually artistic for 5 whole years. Didn’t touch a paint brush or a pencil. I just focused entirely on music, even though I felt like a piece of me was missing. I ignored it.
Home on a break after tour and I had a sudden overwhelming urge to paint that I couldn’t contain. It was almost like I was being possessed and led to the art store. I bought everything I could find, got home and just started painting. It was a release and a familiar feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time. I hadn’t had that feeling since I was a child painting and drawing on everything I could find. Had not had that feeling since I wrote and illustrated a book when I was around 7 and stapled the pages together. Hadn’t felt that freedom to just create without boundaries since my mom made sure I had every single thing I needed at home when I was a child to just create at my leisure uninterruptedly.
I had an epiphany. Society and those around me constantly told me I had to choose, and I spent my whole life fighting with them and TELLING them that I didn’t have to. How about I be quiet and SHOW them. I came up with the idea to do this dual project where half would be music and the next half would be paintings, to jump start everything into my renewed unbounded creative self I will now unapologetically be. I fleshed out all the ideas and did my brainstorming on a flight on my way to Australia for tour. Because listen, if it’s one thing Edna Manley College taught me was how to develop a thorough genius roadmap to my creative process.
Flight landed and I could barely contain my excitement. I felt like a new person and a weight was lifted off my shoulders. A weight I carried for years. I started feeling happy again. A light came back into my life.
I recorded the album “ignoRANT” as a concept, without form or structure but just being obedient to only what I wanted to do creatively. Because now, everyone is about to get the real Racquel. The creatively free Racquel. And I wasn’t asking permission anymore or adhering to boundaries. I got started on working on the paintings to accompany the project and no one quiet got it - except one person. One of my best friends Artavia. Not my management, not my label, and not my team. Not that it was intentional but it felt like they didn’t quiet get it or get me. Again, just one aspect of me was easier to understand; the music. I was on my own again with making this project come to life. The concept seemed to people like some sort of novelty, like something “cool and exotic” to talk about in interviews that made me appear interesting or have some kind of depth as a recording artist. It seemed to people like a cool hobby to talk about. It was frustrating because this is my LIFE! This is life to me and all I wanted to do was create and be taken seriously as a creative. I wasn’t deterred by the roadblocks, my friend Artavia and I decided to start a company to represent and showcase my art. Some DIY vibe.
And we did it.
The journey getting to my first solo exhibit was profound for me in more ways than one. It has been emotional. Tumultuous. It has been beautiful and more gratifying than I could ever adequately describe. I relearned something very important about myself. I rediscovered this piece of knowledge that I had the whole time since I was a toddler holding my first piece of chalk and doodling on my mom’s chalkboard distracting her students while she taught 7th grade math at a high school. That I was limitless. I could creatively do whatever it is I wanted to do and I didn’t need anyones’ validation or approval.
I’m humbled by all the lessons getting here. I’m grateful for the understanding of true freedom. I’m grateful for the support of the ones who love me enough to accept all of me, even the pieces they don’t quiet get. I’m grateful for Artavia. I’m thankful for the legacy of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dali. I’m grateful for Kanye West, my unapologetic relentless blueprint of Do IT YOURSELF (DIY). I’m grateful for my High School art teacher, Mr. Michael Layne who was the first and only artist I admired for a long time - who became my mentor during high school. I’m grateful for art school for teaching me everything I needed to know about the creative within me by making me resent art only to rediscover who I am. And for giving me a useless piece of fucking paper that is a constant reminder how you stifled my creativity.
Kanye West talks about being the maximum version of self all the time and I finally get it. I’m a creative. And that’s the nucleus of who I am. I am the maximum version of myself and the happiest when I create. True freedom is being the maximum version of ourselves. Whatever that is. Despite how it’s perceived and whether it is accepted or not. Just be guided by love, kindness and empathy. So, if it’s one thing I’m going to do, is BE MYSELF. And that to me is freedom.
A Note to Art Schools: Let your institution be that one place misfit creatives feel safe and give them the freedom to create! Without limits or boundaries. It’s the least you could do.
Photos by: @jpg.nati, @zoesherphotography, @2headedxtim
