Alisha Puri

Hayden Dewar: A Heart Filled with Art

The term “starving artist” is commonly used amongst artists and others who "struggle” until their big breakthrough, and unfortunately some artist never really get out of the “starving artist” phase. Such ideas have been ingrained into people around the world, and being an artist is not valued on the same level as a doctor or a lawyer. Hayden Dewar, a talented and passionate Melbourne based visual artist had these kind of ideas and assumptions about pursuing a career in the arts. Dewar spent years working in retail and doing commission work on the side, believing that having a career in the arts was not going to be worth it. The advantage that Dewar has now is that he is able to live out his passion and talent.

“I wasn’t really proactive in pursuing it as a career, and I didn’t realize it was possible to make a living from it,” he commented on Melbourne Polytechnic’s student website, where he pursued a Bachelors in Illustration. After spending five years working on a mural for Dimmeys’, one of Australia’s largest and historical retail stores, 150th anniversary Dewar finally realized where his heart lies.

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Ray Davies: A Rockin Rollin Knight

The 1950s and 1960s was a monumental time for rock-n-roll. Stunning guitar riffs, powerful vocals, and magical piano notes became the basis for all kinds of different rock music, like alternative rock, soft and hard rock. In the 1960s, Sir Raymond Douglas "Ray" Davies, also known as Ray Davies, emerged as one of England’s alternative rock stars. Davies can play the guitar, piano, and harmonica, and he sings. He was the lead singer for his band, The Kinks, and has done solo work on the side. The musician is well into his seventies but he keeps on rockin and rollin.

Davies started his music journey and career in the 1960s after discovering his love for music while attending art school in England. In 1964, Ray Davies and his brother, Dave, started The Kinks and gained their first record label the same year. They quickly became known for their psychedelic, alternative rock music with guitar riffs and cool chords. The brother’s interest in England’s sociopolitical issues heavily influenced their word choice, and they became known for making struggles into music.

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Amanda LaCount: Follow the Beat

I really did not expect a sixteen year old girl to pop up when I googled #BreakingTheSterotype. She is a professional dancer, actress and an advocate for body positivity for all kinds of people. Amanda LaCount started dancing at the age of two, and acting locally at the age of five. Her upbeat spirit and dance moves have landed her in pop-star Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” music video, on reality television shows like “Dancing With the Stars,” and “The Voice.” The young fiery girl is trained in a variety of dance styles like hip-hop, contemporary, ballet and even tap.

#BreakingTheSterotype is Amanda’s trending hashtag on social media. It was created due to the negativity the passionate dancer has received due to her body size. The hashtag encourages people to break the stereotype imposed on dancers by society. Just like models, most believe dancers should be thin and have a “cookie cutter” body type. Stereotypes take many forms, and mostly negative, but the teen’s hashtag is meant to break this concept in the dancing world. In an interview with Amy Poehler, creator of Amy’s Smart Girls, a platform for young women to live up to their true self, Amanda daringly replied when asked about her hashtag:

“Anyone can be a dancer if they are passionate about it and work hard. It doesn’t matter if you are tall or short, what color you are, what sexual orientation you are, male or female, age, height, thick or thin body type, hair color, how much money you have, if you are blind or deaf, paralyzed, or even if you can walk or not. Anyone can dance if they want to.”

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Angela Missoni: Lines, Stripes, and Everything In-Between

Remember twisting and turning a kaleidoscope to see all of the magical designs, shapes, and colors when you were a kid? Imagine recreating those peculiar patterns onto knitwear, cottons and silks, to fit anyone’s sense of style. The Missoni brand is distinctive for its bizarre and colorful designs that have been worn by people of all ages, genders, shapes, and sizes for almost sixty-five years.

An Italian couple named Ottavio and Rosita Missoni started a knitwear shop near Rosita’s village in 1953 with the dreams of making it big in the fashion industry. With the support of Anna Piaggi, fashion editor, and collaborations with French stylist Emmanuelle Khanh they were able to launch the Missoni brand in 1958 in Milan. The Missoni brand is now comparable to some of the world’s leading fashion and design labels like: Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Fendi. The same year the Missoni brand was launched, the couple’s third child, Angela Missoni, was born. Angela, now an adult, is the couple's youngest child. She just celebrated her twentieth anniversary in September as creative director for Missoni, after coming on board in 1997. The New York Times interviewed Angela in Milan, Italy while celebrating her major milestone.

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Lianne La Havas: Some Kind of Wonderful

I was a senior in high school when I discovered the sultry, enchanting and commanding voice of a singer from London. The songwriter, bass, guitar and piano player still holds my attention eight years later. Lianne La Havas is one of the most refreshing 21st century musicians I have encountered, her style of music is jazzy, spunky, and fervent.

Havas' father is Greek and her mother is Jamaican, her background, life experiences, and skills, heavily influence her music. At a young age, she began singing backup for Paloma Faith, a popular English singer-songwriter and actress, while her father, a jazz musician, taught her to play piano.

Watching guitar lessons on YouTube got the adept artist to learn the guitar on her own when she was eighteen. Since she was raised by her grandparents, the eccentric musician named her guitar “Miss Connie,” after her grandmother. Havas believes in being true to herself, and not conforming to the pressures of society. She speaks about the importance of individuality rather than success in an interview with Coupe De Main:

“True success is getting closer or getting to that pure expression in your music and all of it, how you dress, or how your videos look, or your artwork. All of that is you, so for me if I could do that I would feel successful. But also to be remembered for the right reasons, in my opinion the right reason would be because I was a nice singer and I wrote nice songs, I would like to be remembered by that.”

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Ryan Hewett: Portrait Innovations

His paintings are eerie, and complex in nature, the content seems to haunt your mind. With a semi-abstract style and thick layered paint, it creates rich contrasted hues. Ryan Hewett, a South African painter, breaks the boundaries of human’s distinguished features and rigid outlines. The faces in Hewett’s paintings carry a significant moodiness that is characterized by the large swirls of paint. That complex moodiness has captivated people from all over Europe and South Africa.

The South African artist started painting at the age of twenty two, and has painting for the last twelve years. He started with pencil drawings and has evolved, much like his paintings, into a well-known artist. Quite often his paintings are sold within days of opening. The painter's work has been displayed in various galleries around London and South Africa. In Arrested Motion, a platform that features different types of artists, Hewett described his elaborate work process:

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