Lady Gaga Painting, Miss Sixty & Pinoy Radio

Lady Gaga. Painting by Albie Espinola

I saw the Lady Gaga video, “Telephone” featuring another musical powerhouse in Beyonce. Gaga has grown on me a lot over the last year. I didn’t think much of her when she first came out. The overdressing, overplaying of her songs in the clubs, it all got a bit annoying. Now I think she’s amazing. Especially when she performs live, it’s a true show.

"Gaga dress" by Thomas Hartley

As I said, sometimes she goes a bit overboard with what she wears but mostly all cool and funky. Everyone seems to be designing with Gaga in mind. I like Lizzie Whiston-Dew and Thomas Hartley’s (under the label “Thomas Hartley”) “Gaga dress” designed with her in mind in their debut collection. I hope they get it to Lady Gaga and she wears it on the biggest stage possible cos tis pretty cool. She’s one of those women who can rock almost anything and get away with it. Good for her.

Miss Sixty

Speaking of fashion, I went to the Miss Sixty showcase of their SS10 collection on Carnaby Street. I remembered back in school when all the girls used to wear Miss Sixty. It was the jeans that were impossible to look bad in. It was a weird show because there weren’t many jeans on the catwalk. Times have changed I guess. There were few ‘pretty’ things here and there but it all seemed a bit young. The Miss Sixty brand used to be like the girl version of Diesel, although I don’t like Diesel much now either.

Wonder Bread

I did a portrait of Lady Gaga after watching her 9 minute 30 second video. It’s such a great video except I got brainwashed with all the different product placements in it. Coke, Polaroid, Wonder bread (!!) and even Plenty of Fish (a dating site) were some of the brands. Not a bad thing at all, as I guess someone had to pay for the video.

She also had the Pussy Wagon which was from Kill Bill. “Oh, silly Rabbit”.

A first in my time-lapse videos, I faced the camera and introduced my painting. Memorising 2 sentences was so difficult. I was the only one in the room and still I was so nervous. I did about 30 takes to achieve a half decent one. I'll get better the more I do it…

On Friday night, I got a random call from this dude. I thought it was a prank because he was talking in a thick Filipino accent to me. Now and again the random man would throw out a random English word or 2 then straight back into Filipino.

I said, “umm…English only?”
He was like, “you don’t speak Filipino?”
“Nuh uh” I replied. He seemed a touch disappointed…

Pinoy Radio UK

The man on the phone happened to be Sonny Lagaran of Pinoy Radio UK. I didn’t even know there was a Filipino radio station here in UK but I hear they have a respectable following of 60,000-80,000 daily listeners all over the world. Anyways, they too heard about my painting of Manny Pacquiao and wanted an interview live on air. I said “cool” so they prepped me and off we went.

Joining us on the radio was a listener of the station and fellow countryman Leandro Cancel Ordonez. He spoke how he called in to Pinoy Radio a couple of weeks ago and told them about me, also thanking me on behalf of all the Filipino people around the world for doing a great painting of their icon.

Both Sonny Lagaran and Leandro were complimenting me so much. Sonny said how “all the Filipinos around the world are proud" of me. Even went as far to say I was famous and asked how it felt? I said I wasn’t famous but he insisted so I simply said, “It feels the same”.

To end, he did put me in place for not knowing the Filipino language. Gutted.

Xx

Albie