Have you ever listened to a song and totally related to it even though you never experienced what the song is about? The song is so well written and sung you felt every lyric like it was a moment in your life. That is how Delawer Omar paintings are. Yes... paintings. I'm not exactly sure how he does it, but his paintings are the first ones that made me FEEL something. On top of him being so kind and taking time out of his busy schedule for me to interview him, his beautiful paintings is why Delawer Omar is my V.I.P. (very inspirational person) -What’s your background? Where did you grow up?
I was born in Damascus, but I'm originally from Syrian Kurdistan. When I left Syria 20 years ago I lived in Cyprus and then came to Switzerland, Switzerland became my second country and refuge. Here I have found my total freedom zone and mix colors on my canvas and tell the story of my life and particularly of my people who live pain and suffering everyday. -What do you like about your work? I try to let my art be a voice, an appeal and a scream. I create a voice for those who seek love and freedom . An appeal to let people the hear voice's of those who suffer. Finally a scream for those who fear injustice. I like for my art to speak. -What role does the artist have in society? Artists with their tools should be translators to translate people's needs to society [visually]. -What’s your ultimate goal professionally? My Goal as an artist is to be able to reach people's hearts with my art because only with hearts that beat we can change and we can love . -You definitely have your own "style", What themes do you pursue? My themes are human, love , peace, and freedom.
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"Conceit is bragging about yourself. If it's that great others will brag about it for you." - Unknown In my four years of knowing Glen (one of those years being married). He has never uttered the words "I'm a great singer". Matter of fact, I don't even know how I found out he can sing. And the crazy part is, he can really sing! Like seriously! I recently went to his sold out concert and watched him in pure awe. I promise I am not saying that because he's my husband. It's not just his talent that inspires me either. He recently made an EP independently, not even looking for fame. I am so inspired by his creativity and drive, but most importantly, his humility paired with his talent and why Glen is my V.I.P (very inspirational person). -When did you start singing? What made you want to sing? I started singing when I was about 5 or 6 years. Actually, I never had an interest in singing as a kid. I loved to dance more than anything. But one day, my to older sisters, LaTasha and Bobbi, took me and my little sister, Kendra, and I into the kitchen and taught us a duet in 2 part harmony. The song was "A Whole New World" from Disney's Aladdin. We learned this song for my parents anniversary party, and that party was the first time I ever sang in public. I've been singing ever since. -You recently made an EP, why now if singing has always been apart of your life? Simply put: "Timing". See, my entire family sings; it's a tradition. It's sacred to us. It brings us joy, laughter and overall happiness to just sing together. Looking back on the past, if you wanted to create your own quality music, you had to be signed to a record label or at least let someone else have some creative control over what you were making. There seemed to be no way around that. Therefore, during that time, pursuing a singing career, to us, took away from the pure love of music and could have also lead any one of us toward a spiritually unhealthy lifestyle we definitely didn't want to have a part in. How many stories have you heard of "good people gone bad" because the music industry got a firm hold on them? It's really sad when that happens, and I would never want that to happen to me or anyone in my family. So we all steered clear. Now, however, technology is very widespread. Booking time for a studio recording session is as easy as making a dinner reservation. Nowadays, there's no need to have a manager, publicist, or record label in order to create and distribute your own music. I'm able to have full creative control over my music and move at the pace I want to move in. I feel safe knowing that I can do this all by myself now. Musically I'm free to do what I want, when I want. -What inspired you to write your songs? Why is it call The Freshman EP? I grew up listening to artists we consider as R&B "Legends"; Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and Anita Baker just to name a few. They were voices of their generation and the knew this was a great responsibility. These artists lived during a time period when you had to be thoroughly talented in order to become famous. That included the look, the voice, the stage presence, and maybe most of all, a well written song. Somehow, however, we've gotten away from that as music listeners. We allow just about anyone with a microphone and "a beat" to become our voice. The majority of our so-called music artists (with the exception of a few) primarily base their music around sex, drugs, and clubbing. It's become watered down, repetitive and cheesy and we're subjected to this "music" all day, every day. Is that who we are now? Are all of us into that lifestyle? I don't think so. In fact, I think a lot of us still believe in songs about love & happiness, excitement & motivation. I'm inspired by The Greats. One day I hope to create a catalog of music that isn't as one dimensional and debased as the music we hear today. As music should stir our inner most emotions, I want people to hear deep lyrical content in what I create. Since this EP was my first attempt at growing up musically, I refer to it as The Freshman. I'll continue to create EP's the more I grow as a writer; The Sophomore EP, The Junior EP, etc. By the time I am a "Senior", I hope to be considered a really good writer by all of my listeners. I don't want fame, or riches... I simply want to make good music. -If not fame, what are you trying to achieve musically? Truthfully, I just want to create music with a meaning. I have a pure love for well written music, so I want people to hear my music and relate. I want to tap into all the human emotions; all of our social situations and put them into a song. As mentioned before, music has been a part of my life ever since I was a little boy. Just like with any other craft you practice for a very long time, you become creative, and creativity simply needs the best outlet possible. The more I sing, the more I want to write. The more I write, the more I want to compose. The more I compose, the more I want to record. Truthfully, I don't know where the cycle ends, I'm just enjoying the creative and artistic ride. I'm just hoping that there are others out there who enjoy the ride as well. -What are the struggles you encountered? And how did you overcome them? The biggest struggle is allowing myself to become vulnerable when writing. My first thought was to keep my song topics very general. If I'm going to make a heartbreak or love song, then I'll just loosely talk about it. However, the finished product was never relatable. I found that the more I let my guard down and exposed how I truly felt on the inside about certain topics, the more the songs just kind of poured out of me. Sometimes I feel like I've said too much, or that people will view me different if they heard me express myself in any other way besides comedy. But the truth is, we're all human. We all know love, joy, laughter, peace, pain, regret, remorse, so-on and so-forth. I've learned that as long as I'm being 100% honest with myself in my music, the song itself will always be relatable to someone. I'm pretty sure that's why so many different people have a different favorite song from The Freshman EP... and I like it like that... a little something-something for everybody. Also available on Google Play, Amazon Music, Spotify, and Tidal.
I believe if you have good things to say about someone, they should never go unspoken. I admire Ashley for all of the roles she successfully achieve. She wears many hats: wife, mother, manager, and author. She's definitely hiding a "S" on her chest somewhere under her shirt lol. She represents the term "Girl power" . So because of these things Ashley is my V.I.P (very inspirational person). ~What moved you to write and publish your book?
I grew up with my aunt Krissie, who's only 2 years older than me, like sisters. Every weekend I stayed at my grandparents house and we would come up with so many things to do. Now we're older and have our own children, who are similar in age, and get to watch them experience the kind of fun we had together with each other. So about 6 years ago, I came up with the idea to write stories about different things we either did or experienced as kids. I used my daughter Carmin and Krissie's daughter Nia, who are only 3 months apart, to play me and Krissie. Although majority of the books are fictional, something from each story actually did happen. Like in "April Fools ... The BIG Prank" for instance, Carmin and Nia try to make it their goal to prank Carmin's older brother Cameron, (who is also my son and who plays my uncle Will in the stories.) Growing up my uncle Will use to prank us ALL the time, so I decided to switch it up and have the girls do all the pranking. I guess you can say it was like my revenge on my uncle 20 years later. Lol Just kidding. ~Being a mother already comes with its challenges, how do you balance being a manager, wife, and author? Having a supportive husband makes me being all those titles easier. My husband always tells me I'm the strongest woman he knows. Even when I face downfall I always seem to find my way out. My mindset is that I'm a wife and mother first, always, before I'm anything thing else. Because I could lose my creativity tomorrow, but I'm still someone's wife and someone's mother. I've been a writer for the last 6 years but I've been a published author for about a year and 7 months. It's easy for me right now, because I actually have 5 stories that have been written since 2010. So, for the past year it's just been me revising the stories sending them over to my other 2 pair of eyes for editing and letting me know of any mistakes, then sitting down with my illustrator and going over how I want my pictures to come out. I do still write though. But only while my children are at school, or at night when everyone's asleep. When it comes to managing my children, that is probably the most complicated at times. I've been managing my sons acting career for about a year. I love the agency I got him signed with. We are always in communication and they care about what I think when it comes to roles I will and will not allow Cameron to audition for. My daughter is represented by 2 agencies but I've been working diligently on getting her signed to the best modeling agency for her. The difficulty in them being in school as well as their careers is having to take them out early or getting them to school late because of auditions. Cameron's agency is pretty understanding in that I would rather his times for auditions be after school. I've had difficulties with my daughter being sent on auditions in the middle of the day, which I've opt out quite a few auditions because of it. Over all I think in the last year I've managed to accomplish being wife, mom, manager and author because I am a woman. I think women are strong, independent and dependent when need be, and are able to adapt to any situations whether it be by accident or by choice. ~Why did you choose to be your children manager and not hire someone? Wow, I've never even thought about that. I guess I feel that I know my children best. I know when Cameron is coming to me as his mom and when he's coming to me as his manager. I've never pressured him into doing anything he wasn't comfortable doing and I wouldn't want someone else trying to convince him of going out for roles that he doesn't want to do. Plus, my kids wouldn't be comfortable with anyone else. Lol They'd be like "uuuhhhh, naw bruh. Where's my momma?" LOL ~What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Never let anyone steer you from what you want to write about. You never know who you may inspire. ~What are some difficulties you had to encounter? And how did you overcome it? The biggest difficulty I had was finding the right illustrator. Like I said I wrote these stories in 2010 I didn't find the perfect illustrator till 2014. I had people that started on my book and then disappeared on me. I've even had people not wanting to work with me because I wasn't already established or well known as I am now. The craziest thing is my illustrator and I went to elementary school together. I had been following him on Instagram for months before I finally asked him if he was the artist that drew the pictures he was posting. Of course he was so we met up, he sent me examples and within 3 or 4 months later I had my first book published! Not only that, shortly after, some of those same people that didn't want to work with me started hitting me up asking if they could get in on the next book. LOL It has definitely been an amazing and exciting journey for me as well as my family. I can't wait to see what's next! I've had the pleasure of working with Felise at the salon. Not only that, but she took my beautiful engagement photos. I jokingly say Felise was raised by unicorns and fluffy bunnies in a land of glitter. She is seriously one of the nicest women I know. Also, I don't think it's a coincidence that in Spanish (Feliz) means happy. So because of these things and much more, Felise is my V.I.P (very inspirational person), the woman who makes people beautiful and captures beauty. -What are you trying to convey through your photography? And how do you make that happen?
I am trying to capture the love and joy of a child at each different milestone. Babies change so much for the newborn photos to the 3 month, to 6 month and so on. I love getting photos of the little changes, for example, sitting up, smiling, clapping. But the BEST is, capturing the love of the parents. I just live for the photos where you can really see the love in the expressions of the parents looking at their child. -What motivates you to do hair? I love making people feel good about themselves. I know how good it feels to be the one getting my hair done. Its relaxing and a special treat, and then I leave feeling like a new woman! And that feeling lasts about 2 months until my hair grows out :) I love knowing I am giving that feeling to people every day :) I also love the friendships I have with my clients, we grow closer every appointment! -What drew you into photography? I have always notice little moments in life like pretty lighting or interesting perspectives which is what originally interested me in photography but then I started doing family photography, and could not get enough. -How did doing hair and taking photos change your perspective on life? I feel so lucky that I get to do two extremely gratifying jobs. Both feel rewarding pretty soon after, either its the smile on someones face when they see their hair, or the joyful email I get after people see their photos. This positive reinforcement makes me feel light airy and lucky every day!! -What are some difficulties you had to encounter? And how did you overcome it? Sometimes people are unhappy to with their hair or their photos. This is SO hard to hear and always hurts the ego. But I try to stand up tall, know I did my best. Listen to what they have said and learn from the situation. If this never happened, I would never grow so I am grateful for these hard situations even though they aren't easy. It will only help me become better and stronger because usually, it is something I missed, didn't listen well, or made a mistake so its good to be vulnerable and take the critiques. |
What makes a V.I.P?Very Inspirational People are your everyday person that has a valuable story to share. We usually don't get to hear these stories, So I find them, and this is their platform. ArchivesCategories |