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This is an amazing article by Helen Chang for the Wall Street Journal. It’s always interesting to me to see the different perspectives of art collectors. People have so many different tastes and reasons for doing what they do, buying art is a very personal thing. There is no right or wrong way to collect or buy art. Read on it’s pretty interesting.

Every man is an artist, said Joseph Beuys. That may be, but not every artist is worth collecting.

An art collector must make the distinction, and his task is more difficult than ever. Competition is stiffer, as new buyers emerge from Asia, Russia and the Middle East. Art is more expensive — Sotheby’s said it sold about $5 billion of fine and decorative art last year, up 39% from 2006, while Christie’s sold about $6 billion, up 30% — and auction records are shattered regularly. And the sources for artworks are mushrooming — from international art fairs and biennials in Athens and Dubai, to galleries showing works from India to Greenland.

Fine art has entered the pop mainstream — Japanese artist Takashi Murakami made the cover for rapper Kanye West’s latest album — and owning art is the latest barometer of trendiness.

But beyond the hip factor, what compels one to buy art at all? Why are some satisfied with just looking, while others feel the need to possess? Beuys himself thought collecting was inhibiting. Just storing his own finished works hampered new ideas, he thought, and he sold his art partly to break with past phases.

But one man’s burden can be another’s pleasure. Francesca von Habsburg, scion of a collecting dynasty, says she collects because of her restless curiosity, as well as her personal crusade to support new commissions. There are patient anthropologist types such as Uli Sigg, the leading collector of contemporary Chinese art, who collect in order to better understand the world around them. Or those like London-based Amir Shariat, who says collecting is a way to better understand oneself.

Julia Stoschek, heiress of a German auto-parts company, collects in order to draw nearer to the artistic process, as did Beuys’s early patrons, the Van der Grinten brothers, who began as artists themselves.

Why he collects: to try to understand China

Contemporary art is a very good way to access a culture, says Uli Sigg, whose unyielding discipline in studying China has resulted in a collection of roughly 1,600 pieces of contemporary Chinese art.

When visiting Beijing for the first time in 1978, then a representative of the Schindler Elevator Co. to establish a business venture, Mr. Sigg, 61, says he had “no idea” about China, nor had he ever been particularly interested. At business meetings, he says, “I had huge deficiencies in understanding the people sitting on the other side of the table, and I knew I had to close this gap somehow.”

Already an art collector in his native Switzerland with works by artists such as Rachel Whiteread and Gerhard Richter, he delved into Beijing’s nascent underground art scene — “discreetly,” he says — which was slowly emerging from the petrification of Socialist Realism, the sole mode of artistic expression permitted by Mao. Now, art has “given me an idea of most people,” he says.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after a decade on the sidelines talking to insiders to get an overview of the scene, that Mr. Sigg actually bought anything — a triptych of tulip blooms recalling Georgia O’Keeffe and painted by a young woman artist whose work he wanted to promote. It took that long for Chinese artists to arrive at their own visual vocabulary based on their history, symbols and language, he says. Until the late ’80s, artists raced through the “-isms” — impressionism, expressionism, abstract painting — compressing almost a century of Western art history into a decade, and with uninteresting results, he says. “It’s this Chinese skill of copying, absorbing, then very quickly making something new of what they have seen of outside cultures” that fascinates him most about China’s artists, he says.

By the mid ’90s, Mr. Sigg had formulated a collecting plan. “I realized that nobody collected Chinese art even remotely systematically, which I thought was very odd for one of the biggest, oldest cultures in the world,” he says. One reason: “Most art couldn’t be publicly exhibited; it was only possible to hold very small studio exhibitions, or in apartments or cellars, and these lasted only 24 hours and were only communicated to a very small circle,” he says.

So Mr. Sigg tracked down key works from past exhibitions to begin collecting examples in all media of what he thought important in Chinese society — the obsessions with consumerism, taboos, the body and of hyperurban growth. He scoured the countryside as well as major cities, visiting more than a thousand studios, he says, in order to chart every emerging artistic movement.

Almost three decades and several factories later, as well as a stint as the Swiss ambassador to China from 1995 to 1998, Mr. Sigg, now vice chairman of the board of directors of Zurich-based Ringier media group, says understanding China, in fact, is a question that goes far beyond contemporary art.

His collection “isn’t only about collecting art objects,” says Guangzhou-based curator Zhang Wei of Vitamin Creative Space, “but [about] the concepts and energy that form Chinese society, and a channel for him to explore other possibilities of existence — what human beings could be.”

Today contemporary Chinese art is regularly found in modern art museums and is hotly pursued by collectors — partially due to Mr. Sigg’s relentless promotion of Chinese artists to skeptical curators in the 1990s. He says he practically had to force the late Swiss curator Harald Szeemann to board a plane to China in 1998 to survey artists’ ateliers. Mr. Szeemann, director of the 1999 Venice Biennale, included 20 Chinese artists in the show, and the event is still referred to as the “Chinese biennial.”

Mr. Sigg also created the biennial Chinese Contemporary Art Award as a way to introduce juries of influential curators, such as Alanna Heiss of New York’s PS1, to the scene. He has also served as a personal guide for other curators, including Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, curators of last year’s Documenta 12 exhibition.

His collection, first shown in 2005 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, where he lives, is touring and will head to Barcelona’s Joan Miró Foundation this spring.

Insider’s tip: Commissioned work can be more affordable

Prices for Chinese art have soared, and Mr. Sigg says “my means are finite,” so he has begun commissioning work. Most recently, this includes an installation with wheelchairs on aging society by Peng Yu and Sun Yuan, shown this spring at the Kunsthaus Graz in Austria, and two works from Feng Mengbo based on traditional Chinese shadow puppet plays.

Why she collects: To document her generation

“It was always a dream of mine to become a collector,” says Julia Stoschek, 32, whose grandfather founded Brose Fahrzeugteile, a German auto-parts company.

This past summer Ms. Stoschek opened her five-year-old video and media art collection in a four-story former factory in Düsseldorf, timed to the Documenta 12 exhibition in Kassel, the Münster Sculpture show and the Venice Biennale.

Her first public exhibition, called “Destroy, she said,” which she curated from her collection, was received well by critics, and she calls it a milestone. “The opening was very important for me, because now I can work more independently and less self-consciously,” she says.

After finishing her university studies in economics, she founded a nonprofit to support young artists. “This was a good start for me. I wanted to see and understand art from the artists’ side,” Ms. Stoschek says, adding, “Art is not just monetary; my personal aim is to preserve and save art, to support projects. In 20 years, I want to have an important media-art collection of my generation.”

Though her first purchase ever, in 2002, was a painting by the conceptual Spanish artist Pep Agut, Ms. Stoschek, whose home has “a flat-screen in every room and projections everywhere,” says she now focuses on video because it’s the medium of her generation, and for its “enormous spaces for association.” Another of its most wonderful qualities, she says: “You can switch it on, and you can switch it off.”

Among her favorite pieces is a video installation by Doug Aitken, “Interiors” (2002), which she says gives her goosebumps. The room-size work focuses on individuals whose disparate existences merge in a surprise ending.

Ms. Stoschek dates German photo artist Andreas Gursky, and says she knows almost all the artists whose work she collects. Understanding how they develop ideas and bring them to life is what fascinates her the most, she says. It informs her decisions on what to buy, and also helps her avoid reselling works, she says.

Ms. Stoschek usually looks at a piece several times before deciding if it’s the right piece for her collection. With some artists, she’ll follow them for three to four years in hopes of obtaining a “masterpiece” from their overall body of work. She also usually purchases working groups from artists. “It’s better to have several pieces. Sometimes I collect entire rooms of exhibitions because [the pieces] are related,” she says. For research and support, Ms. Stoschek says she employs a team of three art historians, and to search for new talent, she travels frequently to New York to make studio visits. “The U.S. is the important market for media art,” she says.

Insider’s tip: Get good advice, but not too much

“You have to trust the right people,” she says. When starting out, Ms. Stoschek contacted collectors she admired, including Erika Hoffmann and Ingvild Goetz, who is known for her vast media-art collection and who advised Ms. Stoschek on artist agreements and copyrights.

But Ms. Stoschek avoids too much advice, however, refusing to work with art advisers or to limit herself to only a few galleries, in order to maintain her independence. “It’s very important for me to collect for myself, to have something unique,” she says. It’s also for this reason that she avoids art fairs. She says she’s interested in “art that needs time,” which is less suitable to the frenzy of most fairs.

Amir Shariat

Why he collects: He’s addicted to the hunt

There’s something odd about Amir Shariat’s wall cabinet. The rest of the London hedge-fund manager’s office is impeccable: the Aztec-style statue by sculptor Nathan Mabry, a drawing by Richard Forster, sleek Danish wood furniture. But the white cabinet is smudged; one door seems to wear an eagle sticker, the other hangs ajar. Don’t try to close it, it’s the work of contemporary trompe l’oeil and still-life artist Kaz Oshiro. “It’s a painting!” says Mr. Shariat, 36, who obviously delights in his guests’ surprise. Details like the striations of the fake wood veneer — actually oil paint on stretched canvas — hold up under close observation.

It’s the thrill of the unexpected that justifies the hours Mr. Shariat puts in. Weeknights, lunch hours and weekends are spent at galleries. “I like to go and find things,” he says. There’s little that he misses in London, and he visits galleries abroad on business trips. Last year he attended eight art fairs.

“Collecting is being there in the trenches every week,” he says. “It’s time-consuming but very gratifying when you go to hundreds of galleries and then finally, something stands out.”

Mostly he searches for little-known artists, instead of Picassos or Warhols “which don’t require skills to collect, only money,” he says. He declines to name the latest artist he’s been eyeing, fearing it might drive prices up.

Prices for works by artists he has collected have risen. The works of Anselm Reyle, which Mr. Shariat bought several years ago for several thousand euros, have lately been selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. Another example is Haluk Akakce. “When I bought most of this stuff, people said ‘You’re crazy.’ Years later, they say it’s fantastic,” he says. “Most people can’t relate to much of contemporary art, so that’s why the surprise is even bigger when [the artist] makes it in the end.”

When Mr. Shariat does spot something good, he gets on the phone and reports to his collecting friends. They are a group of five, including Anita Zabludowicz and Fatima and Eskander Maleki, meeting regularly to compare notes and often even buying works together. The circle operates under a gentlemen’s agreement: Whoever finds the artist has first pick. “We exchange ideas and views of artists all the time,” he says. “We give guidance and always [share] very enthusiastically.”

Insider’s tip: Choose works based on both emotion and analysis

Before he buys a work, “the first thing that comes to mind is, is it something that you like? That’s the fundamental question,” he says. If the answer is yes, then a second series of questions must be worked through: How does this work fit into art history? Does it have staying power? Is it long-lasting — will the artist still have value in 100 years’ time? Finally, can the artist continue to develop himself?

Avoid “herd mentality,” he says, and don’t throw money out the window by seeking the latest, trendiest artists. He says he seeks to justify prices by comparing the work in question to something that costs 10 times less, and then asking, is the first piece really 10 times better? Mr. Shariat concedes, however, that even though many contemporary artists are wildly overpriced, art history is also made in part by the monetary value of an art work.

Even if none of the artists in your collection end up with monetary values like Picasso, they should have great personal value. “Don’t forget your taste changes, you change as a human being, and that’s what’s so exciting with art,” he says. “If you go through a lifetime of collecting, and if you can keep the work you’ve bought, it’s very interesting.

Franz Joseph van der Grinten

Why he collects: for his own artistic development, and to build a museum collection

The first works Franz Joseph van der Grinten and his brother Hans bought from Joseph Beuys in 1951 cost what would be equivalent today to €10 each. They were small woodcuts, “Animal Encounter” and “Hind,” geometric and Paleolithic-looking. The young Beuys, then 30, and already radiating charisma, next offered the brothers an entire portfolio of his work.

But the brothers, then 18 and 22, who became acquainted with Beuys through their high school English teacher, didn’t have the money. Aspiring artists themselves, they still lived at home on their family’s small farm in Kranenburg, a village near Düsseldorf.

No matter, Beuys said, pay me whenever you have money to spare, says Franz Joseph van der Grinten, now 75 (Hans van der Grinten died in 2002). So the brothers paid in installments, and when finished, Beuys, who’d recently begun exhibiting at the local Lower Rhine Art Association, presented another portfolio. What the brothers bought from this decade-long arrangement, about 4,000 works, is now the largest Beuys collection in the world.

“We sensed the quality of Beuys’s work very early on, long before we actually understood it,” Mr. van der Grinten says. What struck the brothers most was how Beuys conveyed complex ideas with simple means. As a fighter pilot during World War II, for example, he painted with readily available materials like India ink and toothpaste that often resulted in rough, unpolished-looking works.

The brothers’ collection, which includes other works from the 19th and 20th centuries and is displayed at Moyland Castle in Bedburg-Hau, Germany, documents the brothers’ relationship with the young Beuys as well as with artists at the local Düsseldorf Kunstakademie.

Mr. van der Grinten says he and his brother began drawing and painting lessons as children, and began collecting prints and sketches in order to learn from them. They didn’t have much money, and their finds were often accidental, as they tramped through junk markets and antique shops in Germany, the Netherlands and France.

Hans van der Grinten’s first purchase, at 17, was a Käthe Kollwitz color lithograph he found tucked in a local stationery shop. Another of their most valuable early finds was a painting by Vilmos Huszar, a founder of the de Stijl movement in the Netherlands, spotted hanging for sale on a construction site fence in Nijmegen, across the Dutch border. During this time Beuys was an invaluable art mentor to the brothers, as they talked while doing farm chores or while organizing exhibitions of their works in the van der Grinten family barn.

Later, Franz Joseph became an art teacher and Hans became a curator, and they decided to build a collection for a museum. They befriended artists whose work interested them, including cardboard sculptor Erwin Heerich and the painters Rudolf Schoofs and Hermann Teuber, and others who studied or taught at the nearby Düsseldorf Art Academy, where Beuys also taught. “That friendship is beneficial to the understanding of art is clear,” Mr. van der Grinten says. “One sees things with more patience, with sympathy.”

The brothers also lent support to artists by organizing exhibits and writing critical essays. “We promoted these artists not only to help encourage the value of their work, but also for the effect it can have for an artist to know that someone believes in him,” Mr. van der Grinten says.

Insider’s tip: Follow your instincts to lesser-known artists

Only recently has art begun selling for huge amounts of money, “a new phenomenon that [has become] a constraint for both artists and museums,” says Mr. van der Grinten. Collectors shouldn’t be swayed by the latest run-up in prices, he says. His advice is to instead follow your instincts and curiosity. To increase your understanding, trace the origins of the art movements you’re interested in, he says, and be conscious of lesser-known artists whose work stands outside the mainstream.

Francesca von Habsburg

Why she collects: To experience the creation of art

Francesca von Habsburg, founder of contemporary art foundation T-B A21 in Vienna, has changed her attitude toward collecting. “The materialistic desires of the 20th century are waning,” she breezily declares. “What people are looking for is experience.”

The daughter of fabled collector and steel magnate Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (and wife of Austrian archduke Karl Habsburg), Ms. von Habsburg, 49, now says she is interested in commissioning art. She says the shift is a way of “moving beyond just being happy and satisfied with a feeling of acquisition, to being involved in the creative process.”

Ms. von Habsburg’s five-year-old foundation focuses on ephemeral objects and experience-based works. She commissioned a pavilion for the 2005 Venice Biennale from artist Olafur Eliasson and architect David Adjaye called “Your Black Horizon,” a structure of wooden slats that channeled the changing light of the Venetian sky throughout the day. It was installed on the island of San Lazzaro, reachable from Venice by an hourly boat.

Last fall it moved to St. Lopud, Croatia. Getting there requires a half-hour hike, then a half-hour boat ride. She also commissioned Dan Graham’s puppet play “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30,” performed at Art Basel Miami in 2004. “Every experience is totally different,” she says, “and the enjoyment of being able to satisfy one’s own curiosity is huge.”

She says she’s become more introverted in the past year, and the family feuds over possession of her father’s collection after he died in 2002 spurred her to a behind-the-scenes role. “I found I lost interest in the obsession with owning,” she says. “I didn’t want to be that sort of a collector — although I started that way.”

As an art patron, she contributes more than just money. She’ll also wield her network, name and know-how to steer works toward the right venues and audiences. “I’m a problem-solver. Before I brush my teeth, I’ll send an SMS to someone to move a project just a bit further,” she says.

In exchange, she gets insight into the artist’s work. “For me, the first thing is that it’s a massive learning curve,” she says.

Social and political issues have taken an increasingly important position in the foundation’s collecting and commissioning activities, she says. She recently learned of six young and completely unknown artists in Myanmar, whose work is based on video images of the military regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters last fall.

The work is “an extraordinary personal manifestation for these people, versus what we see on TV,” she says.

She’ll support their work by “financing a platform and audience for stories that otherwise wouldn’t be told.” Details are yet to be finalized, but the work is planned to be exhibited “guerrilla style,” she says, popping up in museums that will let Ms. von Habsburg use openings between their regular exhibits.

Insider’s tip: Commission to educate yourself, as well as help artists

Ms. von Habsburg says the patronage practice will radically transform the art world. “Philanthropy is a crucial counterbalance to what is a very strong market,” she says. With support from patrons, artists can concentrate on developing themselves, instead of making only what sells, “staying with the same formula and dying for that reason,” Ms. von Habsburg says.

Commissioning also serves as a valuable education, she says. “Commissioning helps collectors answer the $10 million question: what to buy? Once you get involved, it prepares you much better for making decisions. Otherwise you will always be influenced by curators, dealers, salespeople,” she says. Meanwhile, she adds, “Doing commissions, I’ve spent infinitely less money than dripping around art fairs.”

If you are interested, you can write to Helen Chang at wsje.weekend@wsj.com

 

Art To Buy : 5 Art Collectors Reveal What Drives Them was originally published on Rafi Was Here Studios

I recently ran across this article and it was just too good to not share. This article was written by Peter Hort. Mr. Hort is a part-time judge and attorney, and, with his wife Jamie Cohen Hort, a passionate contemporary art collector. He is heir to the Hort Family Collection, and he is a founding member of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, which awards grants to emerging artists.

The most important tips for any new collector:

 

1. Figure out what you like. The better education you have, the better collection you’ll have.

I suggest going to museums and art galleries and trying to familiarize yourself with different periods and styles.This is also where the internet, and specifically Artsy, can be a wonderful resource in figuring out what your taste is, and discovering artists you didn’t know exist. For example, you might come across emerging artists on the Artsy network, through galleries organizations like The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, which supports the careers of emerging artists in New York and Los Angeles.

Very often you evolve from what you originally thought you liked—sometimes it’s before you buy your first piece, because you did a little research. But unfortunately sometimes it’s after you buy your first piece; this could be because your taste becomes more sophisticated or you find that you like abstract or conceptual work better, which is often tougher to take as a first piece.

 

2. Determine what you’re buying: Are you buying something that you love and you want purely because you think it’s great? Or are you buying something that you love but you secretly want to be an investment? There are different types of purchases in the art world.

If you’re buying it because you love it, it’s much easier. All you have to do is figure out if you can afford it, and if the price is something that you think is worth the passion you have for it. If you’re buying with an eye toward investment and you want it to actually have long-term value in the future, it’s a little bit more tricky. It’s very important for a first-time collector to know that there are various factors that affect the price of the work, for example, a work on canvas is generally more valuable than a work on paper by the same artist; or if it’s an edition versus a one-of-a-kind piece.

 

3. Set a budget. In your mind you really need to set a budget in terms of what you can afford, and I would say you have to be prepared to spend a little bit more. The things that I regret in purchasing are not any works that I purchased, at least so far, but the works that I didn’t purchase. They were things just a little outside my price range but, man, I loved it and I didn’t buy it. And then I lost the opportunity. If you really love it, trust your instincts. As my grandmother used to say, true love is forever. Set a budget and be prepared to spend a little more, A, because there’s shipping and insurance and things like that; but, B, because if it’s the something you really love and it’s a little bit over your price range, I would say “stretch”. Life is short and you want to be inspired.

4. Do your research. The art world really can be overwhelming, so you should talk to people. I suggesting talking to other collectors, or appraisers, consultants, or other gallerists (but be aware that gallerists are trying to sell you something). When you learn a few things about the art world, you’ll learn that the listing price is always the sale price. Galleries will sometime give discounts to collectors because sometimes they’re rewarding a collector who’s been loyal or sometimes they’re trying to build [a relationship] with a new collector. So do your research.

 

5. Understand that size does matter. You want to be sure that this [work] fits in your apartment or home. I can’t say how many times people I know—especially early collectors—fall in love with a piece, buy the piece, and then they bring it home and it doesn’t fit over their mantle. You must have a pretty good idea that you have the right wall space for an artwork before you buy it.

6. Track your purchase. There should be a clear, traceable path from artist to owner, and it should be documented: save emails, invoices, and receipts. If you eventually want to valuate or sell a work, it’s important to have this documentation.

Find The original article at

https://artsy.net/post/peterhort-7-tips-on-buying-your-first-piece

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6 Tips for buying your first piece of art was originally published on Rafi Was Here Studios

This piece is called metamorphosis. With the beginning of the New Year, I find myself reflecting on my life a lot. As an artist who creates pieces based on my reflections, emotions, and experiences it is pretty darn awesome that I can fill a sketchbook simply by reflecting on my year.

I love looking closely at circumstances that caused me to stress out a bit. Hindsight the “stressing” was unnecessary, in fact in most cases, what ever was going on didn’t resolve itself until I decided I was done stressing. Funny how that works.

A long time ago, well, what feels like ages ago, I was typically stressed out about something. You would usually find me depressed, angry, overwhelmed, and complaining about something. A few years ago, I walked away from that version of me. I decided life was too short to spend every day, every year. Every moment, repeating the same drama over and over. I realized it wasn’t any of the myriad of things I was blaming… It was me, my perspective was whack. I held on to so much drama and blame, that I lived it over and over every day.

Things are very different for me today…

Every day, I try to think about things that make me feel good. Things that make me feel empowered, beautiful, awesome and any other fantabulous word I can think of. I was done talking down to myself and became my biggest cheerleader.

I decided I was done feeling guilty about stuff. I realized that things just kept adding up. I was punishing myself over and over because of mistakes I had made 20 years early and adding them to things I felt guilty about now. I realized I wasn’t going to move forward if I couldn’t forgive myself. Along with guilt usually comes regret… You can’t go back and change anything, get over it and move forward.

This piece is based on letting go and moving forward. Changing your story and emerging from the old story like a butterfly, taking flight in your own destiny.

Metamorphosis By Rafi Perez was originally published on Rafi Was Here Studios

I pride myself in the fact that I believe I am extremely different than anybody else. Of course, the truth is that everyone is unique and nothing like anyone else.

I did however spend a good deal of my life trying to be someone else. At the time, I didn’t see it that way, I called it normal. “I just want to be normal” I would say, and feel the frustration that comes with trying to achieve something that doesn’t exist.

I eventually realized that there was no such thing as normal. “Normal” was this boring concept where life was predictable, you were predictable and nothing really exciting happens. True, some people have so much of the wrong kind of excitement in their life that they look forward to a little boring… or at least they think they do.

I think we all want to lead exciting and happy lives. I think we all want to be genuine about who we truly are. The problem is that a lot of people are not sure how to reach the person who they believe they are meant to be. This person is usually under years of posturing, white lies and people pleasing.

When I had my realization years ago, I started a process that helped me find me. By paying close attention to what I was saying to other people, I was able to examine if I was being genuine. For a brief period of time, I’m sure folks thought I had lost my mind. It went something like this:

Them – “Hey, you going to meet me later at the bar for a drink?”
Me – “Sure, yeah… That sounds good.”
Them – “Cool, see you later.”
Me – “Wait, I didn’t really mean that. I don’t feel like going out drinking with you.”
Them – “Why not? we always go drinking after work.”
Me – “Well, honestly I think you are a good person, but kind of self destructive.”
(Silence)
me – “Well, actually, I lied, I don’t think you are a good person for me to hang out with. You are angry, self destructive and honestly you’re a bully.”
Them – “Fuck you man, too good to hang out with me all of the sudden?”
me – “No, that’s not what I’m saying… Actually, I think we wont be hanging out any more, you take it however you want.”

This conversation took place after a six year relationship with a friend who was a self destructive alcoholic.

I was self destructive by proxy and all we did was sit there, get annihilated, complain about how unfair the world was, bitch about women and blame everyone else for our misery.

 

When I was honest with myself I knew that the only reason I was doing it was because I needed to blame other people for the misery in my life. My friend was the perfect sounding board and he was such an aggressive individual that I felt special that he chose me to be friends with. I don’t know, things get all funky and distorted in your mind when you are not yourself. Later, I realized that everyone I surrounded myself with was pretty much the same… This was a reflection of me and who I believed I was. I was part of a group that criticized the things that make me who I am today… Love, hope, empowerment, laughter, and being who YOU know you are, not just a product of your environment. Being different and embracing it is awesome!

I read a story once about Arnold Schwarzenegger that was quite enlightening for me. When he decided to go into acting, he was told that he would never succeed as an actor. He was too big, Had a terrible accent and didn’t have the “Hollywood” look.

He responded with “I am going to be the biggest box office star of the year.”

He then made a movie that bombed terribly. They overdubbed his voice for the movie and it was a disaster. Instead of giving up or taking voice lessons so he could speak like a “Normal” person, Arnold kept going.

He then made a movie where his voice was not dubbed over and eventually became the icon he is today. Imagine a world where you did not have catch phrases like (in best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice) “I’ll be back” or “Get into the Chappa!”

In my opinion, if you embrace what makes you different, life becomes exciting in a very good way.

Be Different was originally published on Rafi Was Here Studios

You may be shocked to hear that you are beautiful. Yes, you, the person reading this right now is beautiful, amazing, unique, wonderful and totally awesome.

I always find it interesting how many people don’t realize how fantastic they actually are. How wonderful their unique
point of view of the world is and how amazingly sexy they are. Yes, I called you sexy…

See, you may look at yourself in the mirror and see that weird birthmark, or your crooked teeth, or the hair in areas where it doesn’t belong. Maybe you notice back fat, a muffin top, small breasts, too big breasts, skinny legs, weird physical features, scars, too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short or whatever other word may follow “Too” when describing yourself. This list can sometimes be long enough to fill shelves with countless editions of “Why I suck today” books.

The truth of the matter is that the person you’re with (or others) don’t actually see what you see in the mirror. What they see is someone they would like to strip naked with and get busy, like right now… or sooner than now if possible.

In fact, when most people get together, the beginning days are all about that… getting busy, a lot. I think the reason this happens is because you take a momentary vacation from your usual habit of breaking yourself down, you see yourself instead through the eyes of the person that finds you amazing, so for a brief period of time, you find yourself amazing. Eventually, you go back to criticizing yourself and then reminisce about the way things used to be.

If Klee (my wife) asked me what physical attribute I find attractive about her I think immediately my dude brain goes to “I like your boobs and your butt”… Yeah, well, I like them, a lot. Now, after my initial caveman response, I love her shoulders, her hands, her eyes, her smile, her snaggle teeth, the way she walks, her neck, her button nose, her freckles, and the list goes on.

For the most part, she feels good about herself but there are days where neither one of us may “feel” sexy or beautiful… Interestingly, no matter how she feels about herself all I see are the things I love and that list grows every day.

The fact of the matter is that if I ask her the same question about me, she would list off a billion things that I didn’t even think of… and most importantly, she wouldn’t even notice the things that I criticize about myself.

The people around you will eventually see what you constantly draw their attention to. This is where you have the power to rock or ruin a relationship. No worries though, it can be easily turned around if you take control of the way you talk about yourself.

See, when you constantly complain about your own body, the person you are with will have their desire to enjoy and love you erode a little at a time. In other words, you’re rejecting them by rejecting yourself.

Here’s an example:

They say, “I could touch your body all day, I love everything about you.” and you say, “I’m too fat, I need to loose weight.”

You just tore yourself down, and tore down how that person feels about you. Their desire, excitement and thoughts about you… rejected. Eventually, the rejection will add up and the relationship communication can become mundane and not very exciting.

No worries though, this is easily turned around by doing the opposite. Talk about the things you love about your body, talk about the things you love about their body. Talk about how sexy you feel, trust me, the person you are with will appreciate it.

For the longest time I felt insecure about my gap between my front teeth. I would smile a ridiculous closed mouth smile that made me look slightly disturbed. As it turns out, it’s one of the features that Klee finds attractive.

You see, people love what makes you unique. Hair color, curly hair, wavy hair, thin hair, thick hair, chipped tooth, body type, clothing style, crooked smile, and anything else that makes you completely unique. These are your features, things that make you unique and are truly beautiful.

This piece is inspired by the beauty and perfection that is you. The fact of the matter is that no one is as perfect at being YOU as you are. It begs to ask, if you had a choice, what would you say about you when you look in the mirror? There is magic in reaching out a hand and remembering that you have a choice… always.

http://www.rafiwashere.com

I created this piece based on something that I believe is very powerful. Word have a certain power that can sometimes get overlooked in day to day exchanges. Many times we relate to each other by talking about the most mundane and torturous experiences we are currently wrapped up in. We talk about how terrible our week has been and usually the other person will commiserate and top your story with an even worse story about their week. This exchange can take place for hours and at the end of it neither person feels better, but they do feel like they got something off their chest and call it venting.

I believe that by talking about the things that are going wrong in your life or the problems you are running into just perpetuates it further. You will keep experiencing what you are focused on. In other words you get what you think about over and over again, you talk about it over and over again and you keep seeing evidence that it is true because you keep experiencing what you talk about. Interestingly enough, this can change by changing the pattern by speaking the opposite.

When you are focused on your problems, it is impossible to find the solution because your thoughts are not solution oriented. Unfortunately it is really hard to hit this head on and simply try to focus on the opposite because even if you try to think about the opposite you are still thinking about the problem.

I found that it was simpler for me to focus on the things I loved, the things that worked, and most importantly the things that I was passionate about. It seems that when you speak your passion, you mind orients itself to find more of the same. In fact, when you are focused strong positive emotion it changes everything. It changes your chemical makeup, your outlook, your problem solving skills become powerful and your over all state of being becomes one of optimism and hope.

This piece symbolizes the power of speaking your passion and the freedom that come with it.

Speak Your Passion was originally published on Rafi Was Here Studios

So, Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what the real meaning of happiness is. When you look it up online (because everything you read on the Internet is true) it says “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”

This caused me to ponder the complexity of this description. I agree that Happiness is a mental or emotional state of being. The interesting part of this description (bare with my nerdom) is that the “being” part.

Being vs doing… You can try to do things that will instigate happiness within you, but in all honesty I’m pretty sure you don’t find actual happiness in those things. So, where do you find happiness? Obviously, you can’t find it in anybody’s pocket or in anything outside of you.  I’ve been in situations where everything came together perfectly to create a situation in which I should be jumping for joy, yet my emotions almost felt muffled… So, I’m pretty sure it’s not situations or other people that make you happy… It only stands to reason that happiness must be a choice… But what is it?

I wondered about this as I thought about the little insignificant moments in my life that I can remember vividly. Staring at an inchworm for a long time fascinated, studying the colors in an autumn leaf, laying under a star blanketed sky loosing myself in the infinity of it all… The small moments of curiosity and absolute love with the world around me.

I think as adults we tend to allow ourselves to get consumed by the everyday role we are supposed to play with the myriad of people in our lives, forgetting that natural ability to fall in love with everything around us… In other words, we know too much about how we think the world works, we know what an ugly tree looks like vs a beautiful tree, so we overlook the amazing miracle that the tree exists in the first place. I think the simplicity of happiness is to just allow yourself to understand that you ultimately don’t know anything and allow yourself to experience everything in life as if it was the first time you have ever experienced it. Imagine experiencing your first kiss over and over, or feeling the wind in your hair as if it was the first time, seeing the ocean for the very first time and taking in every single detail… So, for at least this moment in time in my life, I believe happiness is experiencing all of life, fully and not allowing yourself to take even one second for granted.

-Award Winning Contemporary Artist Rafi Perez

http://www.rafiwashere.com

 

This piece shows the strength and dedication when you leave everything behind you and head towards an unknown future.

 

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