LEK YUEN JEWEL mural by Joel E. Ferraris in Shatin, Hong Kong (click image to enlarge mural)
It was February 1998. I just came back from the Philippines with my first-born son to join my wife in Hong Kong. While she was working full time as an IT consultant, I was the full time baby-sitter to our 3-year old baby boy.
That time we have no nanny yet so I do all the house chores. I know all of these as we were trained by our parents ever since we were kids. It really helped a lot to know how to survive first at home and then in the outside world.
A few weeks later we got a nanny and that was the time I started looking for jobs. I called a friend, a Chinese artist, Tony Ng, and he invited me to join, as an apprentice, to their mural projects.
When I finally met the chairman of the Hong Kong Mural Society, Artist Kong Ho, he assigned me to do one mural in Lek Yuen Estate in Shatin. That was my very first mural in Hong Kong.
The good thing about this project was I was given the freedom to practice my artistic license. My originally conceived design, an underwater "paradise" was approved by the Housing Department. To an artist that was really a good feeling especially when no such major revisions were made and the client fully respects the artist's ideas.
I started painting the small study of the mural in Iloilo City, Philippines, when I went for a vacation and mailed the finished design to Hong Kong Housing Department for approval. What ensued was a 21 nights of painting that mural from 6 pm till midnighton that 6 feet x 66 feet wall.
That time we have no nanny yet so I do all the house chores. I know all of these as we were trained by our parents ever since we were kids. It really helped a lot to know how to survive first at home and then in the outside world.
A few weeks later we got a nanny and that was the time I started looking for jobs. I called a friend, a Chinese artist, Tony Ng, and he invited me to join, as an apprentice, to their mural projects.
When I finally met the chairman of the Hong Kong Mural Society, Artist Kong Ho, he assigned me to do one mural in Lek Yuen Estate in Shatin. That was my very first mural in Hong Kong.
The good thing about this project was I was given the freedom to practice my artistic license. My originally conceived design, an underwater "paradise" was approved by the Housing Department. To an artist that was really a good feeling especially when no such major revisions were made and the client fully respects the artist's ideas.
I started painting the small study of the mural in Iloilo City, Philippines, when I went for a vacation and mailed the finished design to Hong Kong Housing Department for approval. What ensued was a 21 nights of painting that mural from 6 pm till midnighton that 6 feet x 66 feet wall.
