CHERISSE MOE

A draw­ing of a man’s face caught in a pow­er­ful choke­hold of a $100 bill made its rounds on Face­book last week. It at­tract­ed plen­ty of praise, but al­so crit­i­cism from some who ques­tioned whether the sketch was orig­i­nal.

The hands be­hind the art be­long to 16-year-old Cameron Ed­wards. Dur­ing In­de­pen­dence Day, he had an idea to de­pict some­one be­ing stran­gled by mon­ey, so he be­gan search­ing for a ref­er­ence im­age. He came across a pic­ture by a Niger­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er that cap­tured al­most ex­act­ly what he had en­vi­sioned.

Mon­ey, in his view, can be­come a pow­er­ful tool of con­trol, forc­ing peo­ple to com­pro­mise their morals and si­lenc­ing their true selves. “As I’m get­ting old­er, I am more in­ter­est­ed in what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try/so­ci­ety and even po­lit­i­cal­ly,” he tells Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view this week. “I was flab­ber­gast­ed when I saw it and I im­me­di­ate­ly said to my­self that I have to make this a re­al­i­ty.”

Rather than let­ting the on­line chat­ter get to him, he wel­comed the de­bate sur­round­ing his work.

Look­ing to street artists like Banksy—the anony­mous British artist known for bold po­lit­i­cal graf­fi­ti and pub­lic in­stal­la­tions that chal­lenge pow­er and in­equal­i­ty—who use their work to tack­le un­com­fort­able truths and pro­voke dis­cus­sion, he sees con­tro­ver­sy as a sign that his art has made peo­ple stop and think.

Since post­ing this piece, Cameron has gained new op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing com­mis­sions, con­nec­tions and greater ex­po­sure. For an artist who spent years feel­ing hes­i­tant about shar­ing his work, see­ing peo­ple like La­dy La­va and oth­er pop­u­lar in­flu­encers re­post and sup­port it was a dream come true. More im­por­tant­ly, the re­sponse has helped him build a grow­ing au­di­ence that gen­uine­ly ap­pre­ci­ates his work.

Dis­cov­er­ing his

artis­tic voice

Hav­ing to cre­ate pieces with ac­tu­al weight and mean­ing for his CSEC SBAs opened his eyes to the true pow­er of vi­su­al ex­pres­sion. When he first start­ed draw­ing, he re­alised art al­lowed him to ex­press him­self. Grow­ing up with a no­tice­able stut­ter, he didn’t al­ways ar­tic­u­late him­self the way he want­ed to.

“A stut­ter heav­i­ly im­pacts so­cial life, mak­ing ba­sic things like or­der­ing food, ask­ing a ques­tion in class, or hav­ing a nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion dif­fi­cult,” he shares , can­did­ly.

“That is the main rea­son I am the way I am to­day. I found art as an es­cape and a way to com­mu­ni­cate my deep emo­tions in ways words could nev­er.”

He start­ed out out when he was just sev­en years old and his ear­ly years of draw­ing were re­al­ly about cars and typ­i­cal stick fig­ures fill­ing up spare pages. Af­ter a while, he switched to fol­low­ing step-by-step draw­ing tu­to­ri­als in books or on YouTube and sketch­ing pic­tures from his sto­ry­books.

See­ing his dad do tech­ni­cal draw­ing al­so grabbed his cu­rios­i­ty at a young age. He re­mem­bers sit­ting and watch­ing him draw hous­es and ta­bles, find­ing it fas­ci­nat­ing to see a blue­print turned in­to re­al­i­ty. He re­alised he could draw for a pur­pose or mean­ing and not just ran­dom­ly.

Then, when he went on to study art at AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege, his art teacher, Mr Ram­dass, im­me­di­ate­ly saw his po­ten­tial and pushed him to be­come bet­ter. He showed him tech­niques and tools to use and gave him the pas­sion to con­tin­ue his art jour­ney.

Mov­ing for­ward

To­day, graphite re­mains his main medi­um, but for larg­er pieces, he of­ten com­bines paint, mark­ers, colour pen­cils, pens and what­ev­er else helps bring an idea to life.

While he once dreamed of be­com­ing a vet­eri­nar­i­an, hav­ing grown up around an­i­mals, art is grad­u­al­ly mov­ing from a child­hood pas­sion in­to a pro­fes­sion­al part of his fu­ture.

To young peo­ple who have a pas­sion or tal­ent but are scared to put them­selves out there, he en­cour­ages them, say­ing, “Don’t be afraid to share your art. It doesn’t have to be per­fect, it just has to be yours. Your art is your voice, and some­one may be in­spired by it. Be brave, share your work, and let your­self grow along the way. I, my­self, have strug­gled with this for a long time, and since then get­ting over it I have not one ounce of re­gret.”

Asked to de­scribe him­self as an artist in three words, he shares, “Fear­less, be­cause I was will­ing to put my art and my­self out in­to the world; ex­pres­sive, be­cause I use my tal­ents to com­mu­ni­cate my feel­ings; and im­pact­ful, be­cause I don’t want to cre­ate art just for peo­ple to look at. I want to make peo­ple feel some­thing, think dif­fer­ent­ly, and leave a pos­i­tive mark on the world.”