Dare to find radical empathy for the people around you - Murugiah

0:09I've had this opportunity in the new exhibition to explore some sculptural works. Now I'm thinking, right, follow the fun. I had a lot of fun on these sculptural works. Paintings are a joy to me. They've become part of what I do, so I can just keep doing them now. What can I add on top? and it's not about growing in that ego way. It's more fun to me to explore things three-dimensionally next. You're turning these, slowly and slowly, these characters are coming from the 2D digital screen into a more tactile, painterly way, into a more three-dimensional way. What happens next is clearly there's animation, there's 3D animation, there's live-action film.

0:52Eventually, I will become a filmmaker. Yeah. This is what you want to hear out of. At some point, I will make a live-action film. Who knows? We'll see.

1:08Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinic. I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I'm talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?

1:58There are artists who chase opportunity, and then there are artists who simply do the work so honestly, so personally, and so completely that the opportunity has no choice but to find them. My guest today is Murugaya, a London-based multidisciplinary artist trained in architecture, working across illustration, fine art, and design. He's been developing a new body of work, acrylic paintings that fuse his iconic digital aesthetic with something far more emotionally raw, rooted in his Sri Lankan heritage and shaped by years of deliberate unhurried craft. In this conversation we talk about following the fun, the danger of chasing reward and why the most personal thing you can make is always the most powerful.

2:40It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Murugaya.

2:53hey murugaya it's so great to see you again welcome back to daring creativity hi radin thank you so much for having me back you are one of the elite club of returning guests that had to come back there's so much that you're doing right now so much but you're pushing on so many different fronts in personifying embodying the concept of daring creativity i'm excited to talk to you today because you got something to reveal which i think is quite important and a pivotal moment in your career so far so let's talk about it but if someone didn't listen to one of my first episodes of second season who's murugaya who are you how would you introduce yourself for new listeners of our conversation my name is murugaya and i'm a multidisciplinary artist living and working in london trained in architecture and i work in illustration, fine art, design, and generally being a creative person.

3:53You see, as you said, for the new listeners of our conversation, in our previous conversation, we covered almost your journey from the beginning to now, or what was now then. And now I think we're going to cover now to the future. Because I would like you to reveal what have you been working on since obviously since i haven't seen you podcast wise i've seen you in person but you've been working on something so important that i wanted to talk about it what goes into such project when did we last speak what year did we last speak 24 24 at the tail end of 2023 beginning of 2024. By this point, I had been making work with a new aesthetical influence from the years of 2019 up to 2023.

4:46I used the pandemic to create a new art style with the wealth of experience I'd gained from transitioning from architecture to illustration and art in 2012. so 2012 to 2019 wealth experience developing what i liked what i didn't like and then on the pandemic hit in 2019 i developed a new art style and that took me up to our conversation 2023 beginning of 24 and in that time because i have spent the last 2019 to 2023 developing the aesthetics of this style, this new style, influenced by my Sri Lankan heritage, my Western upbringing. I started to think I wanted to get more thematics in place. I wanted to talk more emotionally and personally about the work.

5:36And to do that, I started to also move into analog production. I wanted to make acrylic paintings, trying to replicate my clean lines in flat colors of my digital aesthetic and try and see what I could do, what I could add with an acrylic painting. So I was doing a lot of things here, wanting to speak very personally and emotionally with each piece. And I wanted to see what I could do with acrylic painting. What kind of things could I add? So really trying to make something more personal at this time. And I started making small A2 paintings of very specific ideas. An early one was called Myopic, and it was one of my characters surrounded by vines.

6:30And as you pan up towards the painting, you see these brightly colored flowers and faces. And it was a piece about not being able to see the wood through the trees, and if you could climb up those vines and climb above those brightly colored faces and flowers, your mind would be clear. So I was trying to make a piece like this, which took a bit longer, so that would be the theme of the painting. The aesthetics moving to acrylic painting, I wanted to create something that was tangible, a little bit more textured, an addition to my bright colors and bright flat colors. So the way I did that was I do a digital drawing I transfer it onto a thick heavy stock watercolor paper with red ink because red ink is more forgiving when you paint then before applying these flat colors I decided to do these acrylic drip texture washes and I would drip this acrylic wash over the painting over this transferred drawing onto this paper and I would move the canvas around of the paper around and allow these drips to move across to create this textured background only a human being could do.

7:45This is a physical act of moving the paint around so that it drips in only ways that I can decipher and determine. Then I would fill in my colors on top. So then you have this tangibly made, emotionally presented image. And then when I shared that on social media, I started my description of each piece with ever feel like and then I went into the description of the piece ever feel like you can't see the woods through the trees and then I would go on a little bit and then I would title the piece and present it I would do that a few times I did that over the course of after we spoke over the course of 2024 oh there's a cat I would do that quite a few times.

8:34And then in early March of 2024, I contacted the Quentin Blake Center for Illustration. I had seen that they were developing a new center for illustration, a new museum gallery space. And on that site, and there's the main building, there's this very long building, on that site was a small windmill space, which they described as potentially a space for activations and small activities. And I had contacted the center saying, oh, I've just started making these paintings. I've got this body of work, but I've just started making these small paintings in A2. It's a cylindrical building. I'd love to exhibit them in this cylindrical building as a series.

9:21And one conversation led to another. And many months later, they came back and they said, look, about that small windmill space and your series of paintings, instead of doing that, would you like to open the new centre with a debut solo exhibition of your entire body of work that you've developed from 2019 to now?

9:47Murugiah:We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Co., the first creative speciality comfy company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lux Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at luxcoffee.co.uk. you can use the code podcast to get 15 % off your first order

10:37I have so many questions like you made me think of so many things because I started this conversation with a blank piece of paper I listened to what you've got to say and find some dots that I want to join and ever feel like it feels like a sign of times because what you did, you have created your own opportunity. The more I think about of what we do and how we do it, especially in now in 2026, to sit back and relax and wait for the world to show up on your doorstep is not going to happen. And creating your own inroads and your pathways and actually saying, hey, I want to be there. It's half of the conversation already not filled in.

11:18So what I want to know, what did it feel like? because I'm going to ask you about the transition from the digital into acrylic and physical and how did you get to it but I'm going to ask you that question later because I want to know about your hopes and your expectations from this email that you send off and say I'm making small A2. A2 is not small. A2. A2 pieces and then you present obviously you proposed it. What was that feel like? Did you leave that email at that time? Were you hopeful? What was your expectations? That's what I want to know first. I had no real expectations. I was just very happy and content with these pieces I was making.

11:56They felt truly personal to me. The work I was making from 2019 up to 2023 was about developing a visual aesthetic, but it didn't really have this very core emotional thing that I'm obsessed with, this connecting with your feelings, this sensitivity. I wasn't ready to put it in the work at that point. It was very much about describe or present a visual aesthetic of bright colors, busy compositions influenced by South Asian culture and Western upbringing. But now it's time to just turn the dial up a little bit more and add this emotional heft to each piece. So personally, I just felt very confident in presenting those ideas.

12:40So I thought it was the right time to speak to someone about it and see if I could share them with somebody. And luckily, very luckily, they responded in a big way. This is the cure for anyone who really feels like that one email is putting all your money on 32 black because you were in motion. This is an add-on to what you've been describing because if you're in transit, if you're developing, if you're looking at that emotional heft in your work, that's your main thought process. That's your main activity. and doing this is like an antidote. Sending one email, I'm not expecting anything. That can still make you feel content because you are still moving forward.

13:18Whereas sometimes it can be that, especially in a social media driven world, and I hate to say that, we have made things easier these days. And it means almost like if you don't get a reply straight away, you feel almost instantly rejected. If you don't have that sort of wealth of experience and slight more maturity, because your instinct will tell you, if I'm not getting email straight away back, maybe they don't like what I do. Whereas people are busy. And that's the thing. And I'm loving the fact that it is the one thing that you wanted to do. You would regret not sending that email because where it's taken you to be actually opening the Quentin Blake Center for Illustration in Clerkenwell, it's the top of the CV.

14:01It's the top of the career portfolio statement right now because you're the one doing this. And it all started because you wanted to do it. Absolutely. I think one of the other reasons that I was asked to expand my initial request into a debut solo show was because between the years of 2019 and 2023, I was also practicing illustration and art in a multidisciplinary way. And public art sculptures, festival branding, personal work, whole earthen collaborations, everything, many different projects. And I never stuck with one type of client. I always pushed for a different type of client every time.

14:46I think, I don't know this for sure, but I think the Quentin Blake Centre had seen this varied portfolio and thought, wouldn't this be an interesting way to open a museum gallery space about illustration. Look at what we can tell young people, kids, new career artists, mid-career artists, late career artists about what you can do with your work and the variety of things you can do with your work. So aside from what they would say, which is, I'm also very talented, which is very nice of them to say, but I think the main thing that they are trying to say is look at all the different stuff you can do with this work it's interesting you mentioned the t-word talented because i have never thought about you that because i think you're very unique you are incredible in your expression like when i feel like when the ingredients and the elements are so one of a kind the talent almost feels like that's just a benchmark that's just a sort of foundation because the expression that you put into your work it's like nothing else i've ever seen we are bombarded with thousands of images every day and what you've created what you've developed and as you said like it was that you were doing so many different things on so many different fronts that it feels like coming home to what you were always meant to be doing because i can only encourage people to listen to the other conversation that we had maybe not just now but maybe some time over time don't leave this conversation now i'm trying to say to these listeners stay here because it was a long journey you did lots of different things that made you physically ill that made you feel they were not showing you the light to follow so when you mention it's a debut show sometimes people can think i wish i had a debut show much sooner whereas i feel like a debut show for better or worse it's coming at the right time of your life because what you bring into the world right now is fucking astounding thank you radon a debut show at the ripe old age of 38 years old, having not decided to put on any exhibitions in white box galleries in West London or East London or wherever.

16:59But it wasn't something I was looking for. It just happened this way. I mentioned Talented earlier. It's a result of a lot of hard work. It's not born from nothing. It comes from working extremely hard and presenting the work after many years of developing it. That's what I call talent. It's hard work. I think it's hard work and that decision to double down on who you are, on sticking with the knowledge. I'm not going to use the word believe, but with the knowledge that you know you've got something that you want to share with the world and you're not going to let go until you get to that point, right?

17:37It's so interesting. I consume so many interviews with creatives and filmmakers and artists, and I consume a lot of documentation from what my other love, which is cinema. And I watched a clip of Bong Joon-ho accepting his Best Picture Oscar for Parasite. I'd known Bong Joon-ho's films prior to him winning this award for Parasite, but he used his acceptance speech to say, the most personal is the most creative. And then he pointed, and he was like, that advice came from Martin Scorsese. And he pointed to Martin Scorsese in the audience. And the whole Academy Award audience stood up because they understood that Martin Scorsese, who won almost honorary Oscar for The Departed, they understood that Martin Scorsese's influence on the world of cinema had been so big.

18:33And it was amazing to see this acknowledgement of an entire industry to Scorsese, but that then passed on to a very different type of filmmaker, Bong Joon-ho, for Parasite. And Martin Scorsese makes very personal films about violence and religion, and guilt, if you think about Killers of the Flower Moon. But those things he talks about in every interview being extremely personal to him. He talks about being in rooms growing up and seeing violence as a young child and putting that on screen so it just it spurred me on to make things that were even more personal with no real understanding of how they might be received it's beautifully said because how long can people stand how long even have you been searching to find a personal because there's a beautiful sort of statement of patience in what you've created so far because you were not chasing as you said white box galleries of here and there and it can feel so debilitating to think is it my time now is it my time now is it my time now because that question is important but the question that we are really asking is am i ready have i got something to share because that fermentation that long process of creating work didn't mean something that impact as long as it takes to make is going to be also tripled with the impact that's going to come after this.

19:58Because it's possible to do things quickly, but as quickly as the things come, they also go. So when you think about the process of moviemaking, how many years sometimes it takes to make a movie, sometimes decades. And it's admirable how those people don't let go because they believe in something they want to go because it's the personal reasons, that expression, that you can't fake. I just watched Sirat last night, Oliver Lachey's movie about... I'm not even going to spoil anything, but the trailers are about people who go to a rave in Morocco. I'll just leave it at that. What comes after this film is madness and something I was not expecting.

20:37But I watched an interview with him and he was like, yeah, I've been trying to make this film for 10 years. I've been thinking about this film for 10 years. So I got asked recently, oh, when's your next exhibition going to be? And I'm like, hey, I've just got the first one so just hold on but my response was 10 years time because you need time to develop new work you need time to live life and express what you want to express and then in 10 years i'll be able to put it all together again and see it's like going out and making an album it takes a long time yeah you can shortcut things because we have created so many patterns that we can recognize in making work easier but the good work that that takes time i remember reading kill your friends by john niven which is a killer of a book it's absolute blast and somehow at that time i think i read it about 15 years ago and i remember reading about the fact that they were turning into a movie and it's taken 20 years to turn into a movie i'm not sure why they put james cordon in it but that's another question these things take a lot of time and it's just believe and believe and believe because that journey as you say what you put now into your work more thematic, more emotionally have.

21:51Those things come with time and I feel they come with more reward because you immerse yourself in the meaning and the purpose, in the discovery of who you are and what questions you're asking of yourself that you can transfer onto the medium. It can get very dangerous thinking about the reward, what comes as a result of what you're doing. I did not expect anything from that email from the Quentin Blake Center. I just was like, I'm excited about this. I want to share this. The most important thing to me that I'm practicing every day is really just exploring my own understanding of life and love and who we are as human beings.

22:38What comes as a result? I think I'm coming from a place of privilege here, but I've had now quite a lot the fun projects. And it's so cliched, everybody says it, but the end result is actually not what it's about. It's the journey you've gone on to do that project, or even just the process of making that project is much more fulfilling because you can remember the hours on the table, the hours spent writing emails, exchanging emails about a project or making the work itself. That's what you go back and remember. I never understood it until right now where we're coming up to installing this exhibition.

23:20I'm like, oh, all of the hours spent developing this work and having meetings and talking about it, it was the fun stuff. What people are going to say about it or react to it, I'm excited to hear it, but it's not something that's important. So this is what you quite eloquently describe as your personal experience of, okay, what is the next thing i was actually personally asking you what is the thing about was the outcome of the work of the creative expression but where you've taken it links it back to my book daring forever which is about the role of our brain in pursuing these things because as humans we don't really understand who we are how we are hardwired what's the vehicle that we've been given and i've been looking at one of the chapters is the chapter on permission and i've been looking at like the motivation, like why some of us are more motivated, why some of us are less motivated.

24:10Turns out, just like the color of our eyes or our genetics, like our dopamine receptors differ from one another. Some people have wider receptors, some people actually have smaller receptors. But dopamine is the chemical that actually is the one thing. The thing that gives us the happiest nowadays, the fuzzy feeling is actually opioids. This is why addiction works really well, because we are chasing for that warm feeling. so the dopamine thing is that we were not built or designed for pleasure we were built for pursuit this is how we work as humans so we are actually going after the pursuit as hunter gatherers which were still undeniably in some form go after what's next go after what's next and we don't always appreciate it climbing up to the top of the hill and go in i'm gonna spend here a few years just to enjoy this we're like okay this is this hill where do i go next what is what actually what is the second hill what do i go next so i think there's a lot of understanding we need to do and partially one of the reasons why i wanted to write this book is how do we understand ourselves in this process because we've got so much on our thinking plate let alone to misunderstand how we are operating as humans that when we have a clarity about the one which is the what i call the vehicle what we've been all been given the shell we can operate our brains then we can focus on am i in the right place?

25:29Am I doing the right thing? Because pursuit is ultimately, when you think of the name of your show, it's ever feel like. To me, it's a pursuit of the next. A pursuit of the next, yeah. I wanted to talk about, real quick, you mentioned about questioning oneself and imposter syndrome, right? It robs you of being in the present. It robs you of being in the now, asking, am I doing the right thing? Just be. Another thing I've been doing is following the fun, which is it, which helps you be in the present, right? I've done these paintings now for quite a while. I've had this opportunity in the new exhibition to explore some sculptural works.

26:11Now I'm thinking, right, follow the fun. I had a lot of fun on these sculptural works. Paintings are a joy to make. They've become part of what I do, so I can just keep doing them now. What can I add on top? and it's not about growing in that ego way it's more fun to me to explore things three-dimensionally next you're turning these slowly and slowly these characters are coming from the 2d digital screen into a more tactile painterly way into a more three-dimensional way what happens next there's clearly there's animation there's 3d animation there's live action film eventually i will become a filmmaker.

26:51This is what you want to hear out of. At some point, I will make a live action film. Who knows? We'll see. I am very sure that you will. But I have to ask you about those two words you just said, just be. Because how long would you say it's taken you to realize that just being is an option? I've said it just now. I transitioned from architecture to illustration and art in 2012. but my true love was art and movies when I was 18. So it was 20 years since I went to architecture school. It's been a long time, let's say. So finally living in the moment, living in the present, just exploring what you want to explore next.

27:34But that comes with a lot of privilege, right? I have enough clients and work. Don't get me wrong, I still struggle every month, every year, brutal honesty, I made half as much money as I did the previous two years this year. I made half as much money. My income dropped from whatever to half of that. And that is scary stuff. That is a result of surrounding factors in the world, is a result of politics, of wars, and all sorts. It did not stop me from wanting to explore painting, sculpture, personality, humanity, because those are the core theme of who I am underneath. So I will always find a way of presenting this work in whatever way I can.

28:21What you did, you have come to a junction in the road where you ask yourself, who do I want to be in the room as? It's easy to carry on straight ahead with the comfortable. If I was to borrow from the Steve Jobs' quote, just do your thing. Don't bump into the wall too much. fit in and whatever. Whereas when you get to that junction, you go, do I stay on or do I take left or do I take hard right? It's never going to be paved with just as good conditions and the same sort of financial reward. It's that nihilist penguin meme, isn't it? Do you know that nihilist penguin meme with Werner Herzog? Is that what I'm describing?

29:02Werner Herzog, it's gone around the internet. It's a nature documentary that Werner Herzog is narrating and making. And he films a penguin deciding whether to join their tribe on one side to food and warmth or to go towards the mountain to certain death. And the penguin looks back at the head of penguins and looks towards the mountain and then just heads towards the mountain. And then Werner Herzog, he just says, but why in his very thick German accent? And it's gone around the internet and people have misunderstood it, but it is about nihilism. And I think it, I don't know, my approach to the work, clearly, I think this junction where you decide to not stick to the one road and you go to another, cheesy as it sounds, I think it comes from my love of American pop-punk music.

29:58Music that is deeply rooted in suburban boredom and kind of like an FU attitude, or teenage angst. I still haven't grown out of that. So maybe that's what's the actual thread of why I'm doing what I'm doing. You actually, at that instance, you followed that dopamine. It was just, why would I get up at six o 'clock in the morning and work on this? Why would I send this email? Why would I do this? Because we can choose, and you mentioned about privilege quite a few times. We know how good we have it. This is a Disneyland. The thing even just being able to do this podcast to share with thousands of people across the world you having your show you've actually been able to have clients from around the world us doing this is freaking amazing and we go but is there more the privilege to wake up in the morning spend a few hours painting and then go for an hour's walk in the sunshine and not have to answer to anybody and then to come back and write emails sadly.

31:01I don't know if everybody's built for this life. Some people like to go to work and they like to compartmentalize the thing that they do to earn their living. And I just never could do that. If I can actually interject on that one, no, that's not for everyone. I think that's why there's only a few of us doing this, because we need people to do the other jobs. We need other people to be in the roles that can create a society when you were saying this made me think of a quote by rory saverland who said unfortunately the world is full of people who don't believe in magic that's why you get corporate companies that's why you get corporate structures that's for your politics people don't believe in magic and when you put yourself almost on the fringe of the society by doing what you really believe in what is almost the only option of what you want to do you're creating the magic for those who actually you appreciate it because when you add up your day in life it's like to some people to most people in those jobs if you're like oh i wish i could do that even walking for an hour in the sunshine that's a dividend of this career choice because not everyone can do this and it's the gratitude for the smallest things that then filters back into your work and creates the sort of societal representation of the snapshots of how we see the world that we need people like you to do that because the people working for Deutsche Bank are wearing the gilets with JP Morgan.

32:26They won't do that. It might also be to do with coming of age, turning 38, do you know what I mean? I just had my birthday a couple of weekends ago, getting to a point where a lot of your friends around you are having children and you are at this junction, another junction of deciding, do you have children? do you pursue not having children and just enjoying your life in a different way it started me down the train of thought of all of this work that i've done all of this enjoyment that i've had at work is that it is that all that this life is i've got to live my dream i've got to i get to go back mentally to the lonely little kid in the art room at school when everyone else was playing outside, I was sat in the art room because that's where I felt comfortable.

33:23I get to go back and tell that kid, hey, you've done it. You've done it. And then that kid will be like, cool, what are you doing next? You've done it. You've done the art thing. What are you going to do next? And that definitely means starting a family, probably. When you think about it, it's a perception. It's our perception of the world because you'll have people with seemingly, I'm going to call it regular lives and they'll be like okay you've got your show what is your next show they don't really think about the journey of how long it takes to get to this point of life because you're not going to ask someone with five kids when you're having the next child it's enough so i think we don't always have encounters with people who've gone deep on themselves and i think when you talk about a child in the art class in the art room you know telling him and you've done it you've gone far that takes a lot of retrospection and looking back and actually looking into yourself who am i why do i create this why does this thing come out and where did these shapes come from like there's a physical influences there's a world of movies there's a sri lankan heritage the macabre is in there but that's your unique mixture of things i'm an introspective guy i think i just didn't really know i was an introspective guy oh i could i didn't know i could be an introspective, creative person until recently.