My relation to nature is visible in every single of my pieces. It is like a leitmotiv that I water and grow and spread. And I love to share it with people. It came naturally to bring it back to GITNB 19 - Green Is The New Black Asia's first conscious festival and platform. It's a place for people who want to #LiveMoreConsciously by improving the way they think, work and consume while doing more good in the world. 

This piece will represent the 3 elements of Nature that we can all experience in Singapore and Hong Kong: our relation to the Earth, our relation to the Water, our relation to the Air. Fun and social environmental responsibility can go hand in hand. I wanted my piece to be a bit funky so I added special cute elements such as baby otters. 

Each if these "relation to an element" spreads along a column. The 3 columns frame the door between the market place and the rest of the festival. 

I am very happy to partner again with the Gush Paint! Gush paint absorbs and breaks down harmful Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) such as formaldehyde, and lingering odours. Imagine! The paint cleans the air for you! I used to be an engineer in a past life and I really get excited by all these innovations, especially if I can apply them in Art (yeah yeah, I know I am geeky like that sometimes :) 

When I visited the space with Stephanie, the co-founder of the festival, I saw the entrance of the market place. Every single person who comes to GITNB, will have to pass through these big doors to enter the market.

I have always like the concept of transformation and I feel an arch, a door, sometimes a simple threshold is a very good representation of it. Passing through an arch is like entering in a new Universe. 

I liked the idea of illustrating how the audience will enter into an other Universe and meet the people creating new conscious products and services. 

At the same time, I really like that GITNB makes the conscious movement easy to access. It is not really like something complicated. Magical yes, beautiful yes, complicated no. Just easy. GITNB keeps it simple and accessible, like an every day habit. This is how the idea of mixing Hipster looking people into the elements of Nature appeared. I wanted to say that we ARE connected to nature, every day. All the time. Every time we walk in the street and smell the air after a heavy rain. Every time we look at a Mahogany tree. Every time we listen to the Minah birds singing early morning. All of us are connected to nature in our every day life. This is why I have chosen to draw an intertwined visual relation between nature and hipster humans in this piece. We are connected, since ancient time. We just need to remember.

And this is the most simple relation there is. We are Nature. 

Eventually I notice that each element ended up representing an age of life. The flowy water is infancy. The air is more hectic, windy with the teenager and eventually become lyrical and light and build a family. The last one, the one closer to earth to old age, with the ancient reptile present elderly people. 

Why it is important to talk about our connection to Nature? I believe that when we remember this connection we remember that taking care of Nature, is like taking care of our sister, of our mother. Sometimes, especially in big cities, we do not pay attention, pollute by not really being aware. If we are aware of our relation to Earth Mother Universe, I believe it will be easier to live a more conscious life where we are in a relationship with Nature, all the time, even if it is through small steps.