The Fine Print — RAM

Génie Rouge

In a world where art meets fervor, RAM is the artist who’s painting the town red, quite literally. The 26-year-old South Asian Canadian is currently based in the tranquil yet vibrant landscapes of Bali and has been making his name in the art world for the past four years. With a portfolio that spans painting, digital art, and a keen interest in multimedia and installation art, RAM is the embodiment of a new age artist, ready to venture where his spirit takes him.

In this exclusive feature, we crack open the vibrant world of RAM, a space where passion meets canvas, and every stroke tells a story of a fiery journey that refuses to be contained.

BanAnakin

How did you get started on your art journey?

RAM

As a kid I grew up learning to sketch, starting from copying characters to creating my very own. I really had a passion for it and becoming an artist was a lifelong dream of mine. It really is all I wanted at the core of it, to create and have people appreciate my creations. I really started to cultivate my style in my college years though. Taking courses like Drawing Anatomy and Live Model Painting, those courses really made me fall deeply in love with painting and primarily set the foundations of my style.

BanAnakin

Was it always going to be art? What other passions do you enjoy and did you ever consider pursuing those? A lot of your work has a red theme to it, how did that evolve over time and what does it symbolize?

RAM

Earlier in my teens, I was very into combat sports. Loved watching Kung Fu films growing up with my dad. It kinda helped relieve any anxiety i had when growing up too. Crazy enough I dreamt of being a fighter; going to Thailand and pleaded with my parents to let me go after highschool. I was then convinced to go to college and try my hand in engineering haha. Interestingly enough, I recently decided to use red as the main color for my art work because of the urgency I felt in my life. That feeling of being on edge and constantly on the fence with life. Last year, my Grandfather passed away and it felt like things were really falling apart. I still struggle with the loss because he had a piece of my soul and when he passed it left me feeling void. I then started to lose myself in the work and focused on my first genesis collection on SuperRare called ‘ANGST’. I believe that collection was a pivotal moment of me deciding to use Red for the up and coming artworks and collections.

BanAnakin

Tell us about your current collection.

RAM

My current collection is called ‘Shadows’ and it’s a set of pieces that derive from the inner anxiety, fear and loss we have while putting up a front. Mainly stemming from toxic masculinity and the constant masking of one’s sorrow or fear. As a kid growing up in a harsh environment, I was told to mask my emotions and the way I feel because a “man” does not show emotion. I’ve struggled with this mentality, trying to break this conditioning but it really can be hard sometimes. The Shadows are a representation of our hidden emotions, following behind us; Lingering like a shadow.

BanAnakin

When creating a piece for ‘Shadows’ how do you decide on the visual elements that best represent these hidden emotions? Are there any symbols or motifs you find yourself gravitating towards?

RAM

Visually I wanted to use a minimal amount of color and intensify the facial expressions for the pieces. I was heavily influenced by Ray Donley’s paintings and the way he conveys figures with shadows, although his paintings portrayed a somewhat uncanny feeling you can still feel the sense of familiarity in the pieces. Something like a face you vaguely remember. The spikey head characteristic in the pieces, just like in many of my pieces, mainly symbolize the visual personification of the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, but I tend to keep that symbol somewhat vague because of people’s own take on the spikes. I think how they feel about the symbolism is something of importance to me, it gets me to peek into how they view my artwork.

BanAnakin

What inspires you? This could be inside or outside of art. It could be a favorite song, a sports figure, a warm summer day at the park, a person in your life, a movie quote, it could be anything!

RAM

I’m usually inspired by the music I listen to, using it as a fire to let loose on the canvas and be more aware of the emotions from it while I paint. Been listening to a lot of Yves Tumor recently, I feel like their music is something transcendent and introspective. It hits the right places in my brain when I listen to them.

BanAnakin

When you create, do you gravitate to the same tracks/artist during the creation of a piece or do you mix it up by creating a playlist, or do you just wing it and listen to whatever whenever?

RAM

I usually gravitate to the same tracks when I’m creating, I’ve got a list of selected tracks that I listen to and use the Spotify feature that allows new tracks with the same vibe to be included. I think a lot of my artwork would be perfect for artists like Playboi Carti, Destroy Lonely and Yves Tumor.

BanAnakin

What is your art making process/ritual? Do you make art at a certain time, place, etc.?

RAM

My art process has always been somewhat chaotic, I’m constantly finding inspiration and it usually comes to me at the dead of night. I usually try to prolong a certain feeling when I’m creating. It’s hard for me to take my time with a painting because I tend to be afraid of losing the feeling throughout the days or weeks. It takes a lot for me to get up and finish a painting, if I’m being honest. I tend to see the mistakes I make and lose faith in the creation process, but being heavily critical of myself does have its perks. I can be completely satisfied with paintings I complete and it’s a feeling like no other.

BanAnakin

Given the intensity and urgency of your creative process, do you ever feel torn between the spontaneity of the moment and the desire for perfection? How do you balance these opposing forces?

RAM

I used to value perfection a lot before, but I believe I’ve found a good balance between that. I think I was able to overcome this through simply just practicing the techniques i wanted to include in my pieces, it helped me be more comfortable when working spontaneously. I do want my pieces to be done in a couple hours but if it’s something on a bigger scale then I would break it up into sessions and decide on certain areas that I believe I can get done faster. Staying laser focused is a hard thing to do for me since I tend to get side tracked a lot and in order to go against that I break up a session in a little burst of inspiration by listening to a favorite track or watching a documentary on an artist in the background.

BanAnakin

What is a movement or cause that’s important to you?

RAM

Definitely awareness and compassion. Awareness of the things happening around us and the compassion to understand each other’s pain. I think too many people tend to stone themselves to not feel compassion, it may be because of them having to be in survival mode (making them not able to focus on anyone but themselves and their family) or just by a lack of environmental diversity. I believe a lot of people are conditioned that way by the media and the environment or people they surround themselves in.

BanAnakin

In an ideal world, how do you think society can change its approach to compassion and awareness?

RAM

I believe that traveling alone to countries and being open to many cultures and environments would help out a lot. From personal experience, becoming socially aware and to other people can be a great way to feel compassion for one another. I know not a lot of people have the privilege to travel but, there are many cultures and people with diverse backgrounds all around us, we simply just gotta reach out and talk to people out of our social bubble.

Yeah, I think it was Mark Twain that had a really great quote about travelling. Ok wait, I am going to butcher it so let me look it up… “”Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

BanAnakin

This reminds me of an article and some research I read. It’s called Dunbar’s number or the Monkeysphere. An anthropologist did a bunch of research into the relationship between brain size and social groups, suggesting that primates, including humans, have a limit to the number of stable emotional connections they can maintain. Dunbar proposed the number 150 (with certain caveats). This includes people around us today, people we remember from our past and parasocial stuff like your favorite sports player or influencer. The core idea is that beyond this circle of approximately 150 individuals, our capacity to deeply care or connect diminishes.

Image from Sketchplanations

To put it in perspective, consider this: imagine a person reading the news and seeing a story about a bus full of people crashing in a distant land. It’s undeniably tragic and heart-wrenching. BUT it would not be at the same magnitude if that same person read a story about their favorite celebrity couple breaking up — the emotional impact or the fucks given would be more intense. Kinda messed up but there is some data to support this, sadly. The proximity of our relationships often dictates the depth of our emotional responses.

RAM

The article you mentioned is so interesting to me and I want to put my own personal experience into it. I remember walking from work during a break to grab something to eat. Coincidentally, I witnessed someone fall off a high rise building a couple meters away from where I was walking. This incident kinda struck me in a big way mentally, it reminded me of the difference of how we as a society view tragic events unfolding through videos. These types of videos won’t affect you if viewed online but if you were there physically it was a pure feeling of dread, a feeling that a life was lost right in front of you. Crazy enough a couple minutes later of overcoming the shock, I noticed a crowd of people standing by and videotaping the whole thing. Seeing that made me feel a flurry of emotions: rage, sadness, confusion and empty. I tried to process why someone would instinctively pull out their phone and press record. That event baffles me to this day and I try to think about the reasons of how a crowd of people would react that way.

What a surreal experience, I can’t even imagine… wow. Human nature is beautiful and also very very flawed. And especially in the present, the behaviors and instincts that helped us survive a thousand years ago don’t quite work in the same way today. It feels like more and more people are pulling out their phones to record and watch their own life through a screen instead of living it.

It’s sad to see how we all are increasingly getting conditioned to live our lives through a screen. I do think that it is inevitable in a way. The constant conditioning of the youth, the desensitized behavior when it comes to reacting, and repression of our own emotions. However, I do think that it can all be broken down through just living life, experiencing things we’ve never really did before and getting out of our comfort zone.

BanAnakin

What is a good piece of advice you’ve heard? Who shared it, when did they share it, and how did it impact you?

RAM

“Always write down your ideas”, Something my dad always told me to do. This was a couple years ago and the advice really helped me flesh out my ideas and concepts a whole lot more because of it. Writing down the ideas and concepts in your head is always a step closer to realizing them.

BanAnakin

Yes, hard agree. Once you write them out, even if they are rough and a bit sloppy (in my case, lmao). How has the process of jotting down your ideas evolved over the years? I always tell myself I’m going to streamline my note taking, but honestly it’s always a chaotic mess of loose papers and marked up napkins.

RAM

I do think it helps out clearing your head a shit ton to be honest, the process can definitely be chaotic haha. I always go back to my previous notebooks and see how I can narrow down those ideas to something more attainable. It can be somewhat overwhelming at times cause you would be like “ Damn I wish I went through with this” but, we gotta be okay with the idea that things come and go and if it was meant to be then it would’ve been.

BanAnakin

Are there any people or projects you admire? Anyone you want to shine a light on?

RAM

A couple of friends I believe are heavily underrated are @Mediolanum @arrogantkei @silkysammy and @itshamadsworld. These guys are the future in my opinion, especially in the web3 space. Each one of them has a unique style of artistry that I believe are noteworthy. It’s weird that people you haven’t known for long can give you the sense that you’ve known each other for a long ass time. I’ve had long, intensive conversations with Milan, Kei, Sammy and Hamad.

Milan has really helped me cultivate a lot of my concepts. It’s interesting how you show out your ideas and concepts and simply talking to someone about it can help refine it. He’s influenced me to heavily use fashion as another way to portray artistry. I love the conversations where we go down a rabbit hole of different artists and break down their processes and the way they went about their work.

Hamad is someone that keeps me in check, and sees the potential in my works in ways I’ve never really thought of. I truly love the conversations we have when there is no filter and we can display our worries and concerns without a spec of judgment. Whenever I am in doubt, I know Hamad is there to remind me of the potential I can break through.

I believe the way Kei goes about building his work is a thing of beauty. He’s motivated me to always put our art on a pedestal and create grandiose ways to display it. Kei is not just an artist, he is a creative savant and I admire the way he goes about his artwork.

I look up to Sammy due to his sheer amount of will and work ethic. He is constantly working, and when you’re asleep he’s still working. I’ve never seen an artist as determined as Sammy when it comes to putting out the highest quality of work and also simultaneously evolving his technique.

Each of these guys hold a part of my heart and I’m glad I can call them my friends and peers.

BanAnakin

What is a non-art subject that you are really passionate about that you could give a 20 minute speech on? Something you could give a TED talk on?

RAM

Non-Art related I can definitely talk my ass off of my favorite animated films. Animation is just another way to display creativity for me and there’s always a shit ton of diversity in style. I can talk about Akira (1988) and Perfect Blue (1997) for hours and always find something new about the film that gets me excited.

BanAnakin

Wow, throwback films, nice. What are a couple other films you recommend? Also have you ever done any animation with your art? What would something like that look like?

RAM

I recommend Oldboy (2003), The Lighthouse (2019), Hereditary (2018), The Shining (1980), I can go on for hours haha but these are the ones on top of my head. I’ve done a couple animations, nothing too in depth and as dynamic as I visualize it in my head but right now it’s about getting my first foot in the door. I dream of something grandiose, a pure personification of a moshpitt but moving in like a tidal wave, Visceral scenes of bodies on bodies on bodies.

BanAnakin

Is there anything else you’d like to share or invite the audience to do/see etc?

RAM

Me and my friends are working on setting up an Art Installation called ‘ETERNAL STRIFE’, a conversation about our constant conflict with each other. I believe that humanity tends to be stuck in this constant cycle of hate and prejudice and that it really stops us all evolving as a species entirely. Me and the crew are working on this concept and trying our best to display that message.

BanAnakin

Can you give me more details about this? For the uninitiated, what is an installation, where is it happening? When is it happening?

RAM

A life-size art installation of human figures in dynamic conflict, fighting and tussling with each other. That’s the main visual outlook but we want to go deeper and refine ways to display the feeling more intensely.

I believe an art installation is like a display of your artwork in a more intimate and physical way. We are working towards getting it ready for Art Basel Miami 2023, this December. If that doesn’t happen then NFT NYC would be a great location to display this piece.

BanAnakin

Awesome, thanks for your time and thoughts and I look forward to the installation!

RAM

Thanks for having me, I had a great time. Appreciate y’all so much!

For more RAM check out:

SuperRare

Foundation

Darkroom

“The Fine Print” is a collection of musings on art, culture, and technology. For articles on branding, marketing, and community check out 19% of success is showing up or Marketing Case Study — Women’s Razors

BanAnakin [Champ] brings real world experience to Web3 with branding, marketing, and community management. His work with 10k PFP and 1/1 art has contributed to $3,000,000 in sales volume.