Kezyah Bhola sleeps with a sketchpad in her bed and an easel at the side of it. Her dreams are visual worlds; she would wake in the night to record them.
“My dreams are always very vivid,” she said. She would write the ideas down; oftentimes she sketches them. If the dreams are powerful enough, she paints, sometimes getting paint on her bedsheet.
Her creativity was present for as long as she can remember. The walls of her home are covered with drawings she made as a child. Her parents kept some and her father, Sean Bhola, often jokingly says he is waiting for her to get famous so he can remove the walls and sell them.
The encouragement to hone her craft on the walls is not surprising. Bhola’s father, Sean, is a popular musician who judged GT&T song competitions and her mom, Valerie, dabbles in textiles and fashion.
Bhola, 23, came up with a system to capture dreams, but found out that a balance with reality is necessary to survive as an artist. She started to lose clients and could not figure out what was wrong. The loss of multiple clients led her into depression, but she picked up her brush and began painting on a canvas. The painting took her two weeks. She said it should have taken three days; she started to introspect and analyse her process. Lots of paint and materials were wasted during the creation of the piece. It made her realise that she was not organised. Since then, she has actively taken steps to be more organised and meet client deadlines to accomplish her goals. It was necessary for her to continue working.
“When you’re an artist, you can’t really afford to lose jobs and it ruins your reputation,” she said. Bringing her poor organisation to her consciousness has helped Bhola to improve her life. “I actually get things done now. Before, it would get lost under this pile of new things,” she explained.
It helped her to be less anxious, more prepared for work and also helped to save her money. She would often forget tools and had to return home, costing her unnecessary taxi fare. Those days are in the past and Bhola is now able to handle multiple organisations.
Each of her organisations aims to help promote and foster creativity and this is one of her aims. Bhola said students would graduate from art school but then there is no scope for them to continue their practice.
“I am trying to figure out how to make the lives of artists better when they graduate,” she said. “I think art should also be a career in Guyana. People would just leave art behind and do something else and they’d be miserable.”
She has refused to leave her art behind and since she left the E R Burrowes School of Art (EBSA) Bhola has done art decor and management and built displays for product placements. These are added skills so she can keep art at the forefront of her existence. EBSA helped her to learn art history, painting, textiles and clay. It introduced her to different ways of creation by her peers and made her a better artist. But she had to learn harsh life lessons, when she endeavoured to be an art entrepreneur.
“I had to grow up very quickly,” Bhola said. She had a client who wanted a sunset painted. His vision made no sense to her, but she painted it. The process was not enjoyable because she did not appreciate what she painted. The client loved the painting. He told her that he would pay half and the other half at a later date. She agreed. Days passed and Bhola realised she had no more money to collect.
She has had several experiences like this and thought of quitting. She had lost money from using her materials to create. Bhola described her actions as naive but also a learning experience. She now takes a downpayment and realises it is okay to say no or push back a little to strengthen a client’s vision. These experiences have also helped her to pinpoint who might be an unscrupulous person before she takes a job.
Art and life are great teachers and they have given Bhola many lessons. To her younger self, she said, “I would say be calm, do not be as trusting and spend more time observing rather than reacting. I had spent more time reacting and not observing and I missed a lot of opportunities because of it. If I had taken the time to just observe rather than react it would have been better.”
Creating has also taught her patience and she has developed a clearer mind. Bhola now meditates at least three times a day. She needs to do it to keep on track to accomplish her many goals. It centres her and helps with positive thoughts. While the negative thoughts can come, they cannot take hold of her to affect her output. She needs to sustain herself, both financially and emotionally.
Art has brought feelings from her subconscious that she did not realise needed to be dealt with. She did not expand as that is information she is not comfortable sharing. However, she knows that she has found a way to live a better life through art.
Bhola is on instagram @chronicles_of_zy/ and https://www.instagram.com/art.ives.gy/
