Creativity is often thought of as some mysterious force that is reserved for a select few. In reality, however, many of us start with the same creative means — colored pencils, crayons, and various humble materials — it’s just a matter of being able to keep at it, without fear of failure and with a curiosity to document your observations of the world.

Having first gravitated towards art by recreating his favorite cartoon characters, Kristofferson San Pablo never put the colored pencils down. With an early business acumen in mind, San Pablo used to draw images of Sonic the Hedgehog and sell them to friends, which he’d use to buy video games and comic books. The characters within these worlds would, subconsciously, serve as templates for him to create his own set of figures and scenes.

The Filipino-American artist immigrated to America when he was four, after his parents were able to work enough jobs to send their kids to the US. Growing up in Southern California’s Inland Empire (IE), San Pablo recalls their being not much to do but watch movies and television, as well as hang out at friends houses — many of which were DJs, graffiti writers and B-Boys.

Nowadays, much of San Pablo’s early influences continue to reappear within his work — from The Simpsons, the Peanuts gang, and The Sopranos, to sports icons, meme culture, and of course, the enigmatic Larry David. He translates each within a playful aesthetic that is largely created through colored pencils and oil paint, ranging traditional nude portraiture to surrealist scenes riddled with subtle messaging, such as a nod to his Asian American heritage, along with constantly recreating his friends, family, pets, and any and all observations that catches his eye out in the open or on his Instagram feed.

For the latest Pen & Paper, Hypeart caught up with San Pablo to learn more about his vibrant aesthetic, along with his creative studio, Vacancy Projects. Read the full interview below.

Who would you say your influences were growing up, not just in terms of artists, but the wider throes of culture?

One of things I think that benefited me and my art was actually having a genuine love for pop culture. When you live in the Inland Empire or more rural areas, you don’t have many choices — especially as a young teen. So during the hot summer days, I spent a lot of time inside watching TV and movies, but also my interest in drawing naturally made me recreate what I was observing on TV, along with magazines that were laying around the house or comic books I would collect. Graffiti was a big influence on me in high school and seeing the connections from graffiti to Pop Art was really eye opening. The transgressive ideas behind graffiti, punk and Hip-hop got me into into books so I read a lot of Palahniuk, Didion, and Baudelaire, amongst others. The Simpsons, Robert Crumb, MTV’s Liquid Television and MTV2 (they use to play underground rap, indie, rave videos) were huge on me as well.

Nowadays, it’s a bit more simple. I think the pandemic gave me new perspectives on how I thought about art. It kind of helped me unlearn a lot of the trappings of academia and brought me back into a mindset of how I made art when I was younger, where it was just observing something, reacting to it through drawing, and letting things exist because I felt they I needed to make it.

What is your medium of choice? Colored pencil, oil, acrylics?

I love to draw and paint in a traditional sense. So it goes: drawing pen, colored pencils, then oil paint. Before all that, however, I usually work from photographic sources, so really a camera comes before all of that.

“My practice is equal parts couch potato and flaneur.”

Walk us through your process, from your earliest ideation to the final mark? And how long does a piece usually take to complete?

My process is reactive, which means it really depends on how I respond or react to an image that catches my attention. I carry a sketchbook all the time and force myself to draw everyday for a few minutes, especially if I see something that holds my attention for more than a quick scroll or double tap on my phone. If I save an image on my phone, it usually means I’ll make a drawing of it later. A lot of times, I will draw from photos I take of my friends or things I see, but I also force myself to stop looking at a screen and go to a coffee shop or sit outside to draw from observation for a few hours.

It’s actually tricky when I work and decide what ends up a final piece of art I want to show. Sometimes when I make a drawing that I intend to be a painting, I end up deciding that the small drawing is the final version of that image. It doesn’t always need to be a big heroic oil painting. I think small works can be just as powerful as big ones. Usually you can tell when a piece is complete when you land at it’s ending.

Do you have a personal favorite piece you’ve done?

This is a hard one because I will go through waves where my favorite piece changes. Right now, my favorite piece is actually a small drawing of my wife Mary and our dog Daryl. I’ve done portraits of her a lot in the past, as well as of my dogs, but this one is special because it’s at our first home we bought together. There’s also a poster in the background of the movie Speed, which I love, along with another portrait of our late dog Dwight who passed away last year. Also, the dim lighting of the room opened up a lot of my interest in wanting to paint/draw light which I think will be key in the paintings I’m working on at the moment. I’m really drawn to creating these images of rooms and people in the rooms with various images and objects in the backgrounds.

You reference an array of sources, from pop cultural figures from sports and television, such as your Lakers championship tee back in 2020, Larry David, a pudgy Nikola Jokic as a teenager to the dancing disco kid gif, along with your partner and dog. Equal parts humor and nostalgia, how would you define your practice?

I’d like to think of my practice represents my experience as an observer of culture, but also a mirror of it. There’s a poem by Baudelaire about the idea of the ‘flâneur’ which is kind of defined as “an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of industrialized, contemporary life”. We’re all flâneurs in a sense, but I definitely relate to that a lot when it comes to how I approach making art. I see something in the world, react a certain way to it through my art, and then see where it goes from there.

When I’m being a couch potato, I look through screens (tv, phone, computer), see what goes on in the world or look at a lot of history, and then react to it through art. Then when my loved ones wonder where i’ve been, I go outside to meet with them, observe my surroundings, document and then make art about it, but from the lens of someone who lives in California. So my practice is equal parts couch potato and flaneur. URL then IRL!

“The layers and themes are like easter eggs.”

Are there any underlying themes or messages that you subtly impart in the work?

There are always underlying themes in my work, some more layered than others. Whenever something becomes a meme through it’s viral life on the internet, it doesn’t mean I’m always going to turn it into art. It has to make sense for me to draw or paint it. For example, during the early pandemic days, a lot of asian people were getting famous on TikTok in ways where they became more famous than the celebrities we were use to. Rose from 90 Day Fiancé, Soy Tiet making those videos of him singing a countdown of numbers, the guy in Korea who danced in the rain, aka Always Wet Boy, the woman in China dance cooking with the giant wok… they all occupied our screens more than traditional celebrities & since I’m also Asian, that visual representation was appealing to me.

Also, the nature of a meme and it’s often short lifespan is something I think about often. I’d like to think taking time by painting or drawing it helps slow down the often short and forgotten lifespan of the image. It also kind of immortalizes it in a different way, especially knowing its going to sit in a gallery or museum. The car paintings tell a story about traffic and our relationship with these vehicles and customization culture. The nudes and portraits tell a story about LA, humor, and seduction, but also me breaking free from the conservatism of the Catholic culture tied to the history of my people and colonization.

Sometimes you’ll find a Simpsons character in the work, not only cuz I grew up watching the show, but as a fun joke I like to tell people that the Simpsons are asian cuz they’re yellow. So there’s definitely a lot about my Asian-American identity, specifically a Filipino-American/Southern Californian identity. Even though it might not seem like it right away, the layers and themes are like easter eggs.

When did you first start Vacancy Projects and can you talk about your motives behind it?

I started Vacancy Projects in 2013. Around that time, we were coming off a real recession and a lot of galleries weren’t taking much risks on younger artists. I was doing shows, but usually at smaller project spaces where it was harder to sell work. At the time, I didn’t have an Instagram, I was mainly using Tumblr or Facebook to promote projects I was doing. At that same time, a bunch of my paintings were going viral online and lame clothing brands were stealing my images from my website or off tumblr and putting them on shirts without giving me credit. One painting in particular was of the rapper Cam’ron I did in like 2012 where he’s wearing his pink coat talking on his pink cell phone. Mary, my partner of Vacancy Projects (and life partner) saw my painting of Cam’ron on a shirt Eddie Huang was wearing when he was doing that Vice show and everyone thought I made the shirt — when it was clearly stolen from me.

Mary said that it could be a good idea and an extra source of income if we started our own little thing to make pretty much whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. I don’t think of Vacancy Projects as a brand, it’s more of a creative studio/small press that is an extension of my practice, which allows me to create stuff in small quantities whenever I have the itch for it. I worked in streetwear for years before I pursued my masters in fine arts degree and the one thing I always kinda hated was waiting on production. You make something cool and want to see in the world, but sometimes it takes a year or more for it to be released. Vacancy Projects allows me to put something out tomorrow if I wanted to. Also, it’s a nice way to let people who like my work buy something I make, especially if they can’t afford to buy an original — art ain’t cheap!

Any upcoming exhibitions or projects you’d like to share?

This weekend (August 10 to 13) is actually the return of the LA Art Book Fair since pre-COVID days and I’ll be there via Vacancy Projects signing copies of the new edition of the Spoony Sleeps On Sculptures book, as well as other releases we put out. Next month, I also have a big show at the grand opening of the new Residency Art space at Hollywood Park.

All artwork courtesy of Kristofferson San Pablo for Hypeart.