The only thing more intense than Caratoes‘ murals is how excited she is about painting them.
The only thing more intense than Caratoes‘ murals is how excited she is about painting them.
Originally from Belgium, she’s got a background in Biochemistry and Game Design, and she’s in town for the Richmond Mural Project.
She said her art often has some sort of transitioning story or meaning behind it. For RMP 2015, she’s started with a caterpillar, held by disembodied hands.
Caratoes actually hates caterpillars, she said they’re creepy. “But they can transform into something really beautiful like a butterfly… So I was thinking that if you look at the wall, you would see so many hands nurturing this ugly thing” that will eventually transform into something wonderful.”
She said this concept can inspire personal motivation. “So even though your situation might not be really good or super convenient, if you nurture it, at some point maybe it will turn into something beautiful,” she said.
Her murals are in constant flux from the time of the original sketch to the finished product on the wall. “How I work is I’ll have a sketch, but its just lines,” she said. “Sometimes when I get to the wall, I can see that it doesn’t fit and I need to change everything on this part.”
She said the wall itself can also be a driving force in the design. “I can invent things that match with the structures of the roof tops, so I thought it would be cool to actually use the structure, instead of just making one image, so it is actually living and laying on top of the roof tops, interacting.”
This flexibility is integral to making a good composition. “People also say that my work sometimes is kind of trippy, but I think that’s cool because it means my work moves in some way,” she said. “It would be cool to imagine if you drive by it or walk by it everyday, maybe at some point, you can imagine that [the butterfly] leaps into the sky, it’s sort of mid action.”
Caratoes grew up in a small town in Belgium, but her parents are from Hong Kong. She said she was raised in a conservative environment, both at home and at her Catholic grade school, and there were a lot of limitations when it came to what girls could and could not do.
She said it’s not always easy to be a woman, and the mural-game is no exception. “A lot of things that I do in my life are male dominated. I graduated as a game designer, which is very male dominated too, and also I long board too. I hate it when people say that’s good for a girl,” she said.
“We need to work double as hard to get the same respect or whatever. I just want people to say, ‘that’s good,’ not good for a girl.”
“I had to slowly de-learn everything I’ve ever been taught by society,” she said. Incrementally, she gave up the life that she thought society wanted her to have, with a full time job, her high school boyfriend, a house and a dog. “Little by little I started giving all that up and now I’m here, doing the most random thing that I’ve done in my life. I don’t know where its gonna go.”
But she smiles when she said this and you can feel her excitement. “I started [making murals] because at some point, I realized that whatever I wanted to do, I could. It’s possible.”
This realization was spurred by an opportunity she came across while working in Amsterdam. “I had this ten-year plan and I achieved it within a month and I was like ‘woah that’s crazy,’” she said. “I thought if I could change little things in my environment to give signs that things are possible, maybe it will trigger the same thoughts in other people and they will give other things that they always wanted to do a chance.”
“It’s good to make drastic changes, not to be stuck in a situation where you think, oh my God, I hate this situation, I want to get out of it,” she said. You can’t wait for something or someone else to change, “you need to realize that you are the person who needs to make the first step, or it will never happen.”
These changes have been the result of a series of choices she’s made. “I think whatever decision I’ve made in life, I learn a lesson from it and I will carry it on.” Biochemistry, for example fostered an understanding of how things are connected to each other and what they’re made from.
“I’m interested in biochemistry and I’m fascinated by imperfections… and how people can be different because of I don’t know what,” she said. “I want to understand. I think it’s almost trippy and that kind of trippiness carries itself in my work.”
Check out her mural over on 1814 E Main, it’s incredible.
