User:Levixspm/sandbox

Ryle Ramirez
Ryle Ramirez (born May 21,1997) is a Filipino-Canadian contemporary artist from Cebu, Philippines.

Early Life
Ryle Ramirez was born in a small town of Compostela, Cebu, 21st of May, 1997, where the daily struggles and oppression of the people residing in a developing county are intensely felt at a deplorable level. Due to an early experience with discrimination, racism, oppressive religious hold, and hypocrisy, Ryle was immediately introduced to the major societal problems of his country.

Ryle's background in the arts developed during his early years at stone furniture company, Zerimar Furnitures Industries, that supplied the Marquis Collection of Beverly Hills, California. Due to the creative nature of his environment, this fostered a nurturing setting for Ryle to freely enjoy the process of creating furniture. Additionally, it was a catalyst to his personal realization of his attachment and reverence for the arts.

Concept
The concept of Ryle Ramirez's artworks is mainly based on the struggles, agony, and adversity that he had first-handedly experienced in his life. Most of this is caused from his socio-economic roots as young Filipino immigrant. As an immigrant wandering in the streets of an unknown country, finding solace and comfort becomes extremely difficult to discover. Furthermore, the journey towards the pinnacle of success, which too many of his fellow immigrants, deemed to be an insurmountable feat, was also inordinately bleak for introverts. As a young struggling creative, Ryle has not fully grasped the inevitable fist of failure. Though the society that he resided in doesn’t serve artist, he continues to strive and conquer the narrow path to success. Every stroke of the broken bristles of his brush, sends a message towards his audience, a message that conveys, "The ruthlessness of the journey to attaining your dreams will destroy your innate presence that you have delicately constructed throughout your years. However, let the hunger and desire that initiated this journey navigate the narrow path that you deeply covet and at the end find the beauty you confidently believed in."

Idea of His Works
His artworks typically revolves around different themes displayed in one canvas. At first glance, the themes may appear to be incoherent and contradictory, but for Ryle, the contrasting ideas makes it more visually alluring and thought provoking. This analogy is comparable to two subjects, his paintings as a maze and the viewers as their own guide to understanding the labyrinth.

In his paintings, he wants the audience to realize that the subject is indeed them. He wants his audience to treat his paintings as a mirror. The flesh-like appearance of his subjects are there to remind his audience that behind our suits of skin, we are all the same. The struggles, pain and sufferings are a common conjecture that we are all facing. Ryle also wants to accentuate the notion of individual suffering as a commonality of the whole and understanding this forgotten and often presumed speculation will encourage everyone to be empathetic towards each other in spite of adversity. And the idea of THEM and US, through time and a hell lot of understanding, will cease to exist.

Visit to Manila
At a young age of 14, Ryle was given the opportunity to visit the capital of the Philippines, Manila. It was there when he was enlightened with the sad reality of Filipinos. Divisoria is a place of commerce in the capital, where low to middle class citizens are free to commercialize. It was also there where Ryle got his first taste of discrimination. In his own country, the young artist was discriminated against for being a Cebuano. With a different dialect than the greater Tagalog's in the region, he was mocked for his accent in his great effort of trying to fit in with the locals. This incident sparked something within Ryle's mind. He started pondering the reason to why his own people were doing this to their own. Ryle came up with an innocent conclusion, "maledukado", or impoliteness as a product of lack of knowledge and will be the causal agent for the Philippines.

Alongside discrimination, poverty is also one of the greatest obstacle of the people. Despite of the prejudice that hard work equates to an affluent lifestyle, he immediately apprises that in a country that has a disbarring divide between the well off and poor, the amount of work should not be the basis of life, but the corruption that creates an unbreakable oppressive cycle for the impoverished.

Immigrating to Canada
At 17, Ramirez was forced to immigrate to Canada in search for a brighter future. Everyone he encounters proclaims that Canada is the new place to seek the "American Dream". However, to his dismay, Canada did not provide the luxury that was promised to him. This led to his spiral with depression from multiple causes including major financial crisis that nobody could have prepared him for. To him, it felt like he was working ahead of his time. His responsibilities to his family overpowered his need for himself. While providing for his family, he lost sight of what motivated himself, which is his creativity. The lack of creativity in his life, drained his motivation and desire to continue a path within the arts. However, despite of his internal and external struggle, he realized that art will indefinitely be his voice in a deafening world. It dawned unto him that his early experience with society's issues are now the immediate experience in his adult life. This contrasting experience that used to be an observation is now an experience that he can emphasize and portray in his paintings. An ironic realization that suffering is not localized to developing countries, but is omnipresent in our time, from history to present.