For American artist Tyler Ramsey, art is freedom

In answering the question of what art is to him, American artist Tyler Ramsey gave only one word: "freedom." 

 

Indeed, freedom did ring in the giant painting that took up a good portion of the long wall at Fully Booked’s Top Shelf, where Ramsey was to perform live art last August 28 for the benefit of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC).

The painting was intense to say the least, but whimsical too, with its splashes of neon pinks and fluorescent greens, and odd shapes and faces scrawled across the canvas.

 

For the size and sight of it, the painting was an arguable scene-stealer, eclipsing the 4- and 5-square inch paintings (also by Ramsey) on display beside it. The action in the brush strokes and the energy in the lurid colors were so strong, it was bewildering to realize that the painting wasn’t actually in motion. 

 

The painting’s progenitor was not hard to spot. Much like his giant masterwork, he moved across the room with unmistakable vivacity, and in the teeming crowd of pristine fashionables, he was the only one with paint splattered across his fancy jacket—though of course by the end of the night, this was no longer the case.

 

Ramsey’s exhibition was live as live art can get when even the canvases were living, breathing people, among them TV personality Tim Yap, model Mika Lagdameo, PRC chairman Dick Gordon, and several others who seemed both afraid and elated to have Ramsey splash paint all over them.

 

Those who were lucky enough to have been painted on by Ramsey went home with their clothes and shoes elevated to original artwork status, but as it turned out, almost everyone got to bring home a piece of Ramsey artwork that night.

 

“It’s not a decoration. It’s a piece of art. I don’t think it should match anyone’s drapes,” Ramsey said of his big, psychedelic masterpiece. Then, in a move that surprised everyone, Ramsey handed a pair of scissors to a lucky girl and told her to cut out her favorite piece from the painting, and pass the scissors on to whoever else wants one.

 

At the end of the night, the gigantic painting had dissolved into many little pieces into the sea of people who had come to the event and had, at that point, seemed so empowered by the colorful piece of canvas in their hands that the room seemed about to burst of energy and general happiness.

 

Unconventional

 

Clearly, Ramsey’s approach to art is rather unconventional. Aside from allowing people to cut his works up, Ramsey has also never used a paintbrush and chose to forego formal training to develop a technique and style all on his own.

Ramsey estimated 2000 as the year he started painting. Before that, he had worked as a television producer in Hollywood.

 

“I started out in the lowest position on ‘Baywatch’ and I had to work my way up. It was a huge hassle and I had to take a lot of crap from that time…it’s no fun for anybody,” he told GMA News Online.

 

“But I had this voice one day, and it’s like, you should be an artist… Since that happened, I made a decision to just jump in,” he shared.

 

By “jumping in,” Ramsey meant going to an art store and grabbing the biggest canvas he could find and only the paints that “seemed fun” to him—never mind the brushes!

 

“I went to an art store and probably freaked out some of the people there. I was like, I’m the world’s greatest artist and I need some supplies… I had brushes in my basket for a while but those all seemed lame and like a real hassle so I only got what I wanted,” he shared.

 

Armed with his new supplies, trippy imagination, and boundless energy, Ramsey buckled down to develop his own painting style, though of course, that didn’t come without a few blunders. 

 

“For years I made tons of mistakes that probably a first year art student learns not to do on day one. But after a few years I was confident that I had developed my own voice,” he said.

 

That voice turned out to be a rather aggressive one, characterized by heavy layers of paint in bold colors applied by hand in strong strokes. Ramsey quipped, “I kind of just attacked art like it was a ferocious beast…no wait, I’m the ferocious beast!”

 

And though he shared that a lot of his earlier works were marked by angst, ultimately, his art is more fanciful than ferocious, making it perfect for more philanthropic endeavors, which Ramsey has spared no time in getting involved in. 

 

Now, aside from donating to the PRC and designing shoes for humanitarian shoe brand TOMS, Ramsey has also been creating artwork for the United Nations (UN), with some of his work even owned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. 

 

“Early on when I started painting, everything would be like, I was probably like a teenager, everything was about my angst and everything that had happened to me,” he shared. Ramsey’s father had attempted suicide when he was a child.

 

But he explained how he was able to free himself from that angst when he learned to refocus his art on good. 

 

“One day I started working with the UN on a big project and it changed my life and focused that attention from inward to outward,” he shared. “That has made all the difference in the world to me.”

 

As it turns out, the difference has affected not only Ramsey, but the many others—whether PRC or TOMS beneficiary or just a random art lover or fan—whose days have been made and lives brightened by Ramsey’s art. –KG, GMA News