Meet Amihan Ybarita aka Mean Mustard—her pseudonym since 2016 that is representative of both her nickname (Me-an) and The Beatles’ song “Mean Mr. Mustard” from the album Abbey Road.
She intends to devote her life to mainly painting The Beatles which is quite amusing, when you consider that her parents hadn’t probably met each other yet when The Beatles disbanded in 1970.
As a child, Mean would observe her mother draw so effortlessly—with such smooth strokes—that she decided to try it out. She got herself a drawing book and started to practice and ended up as an awardee for her initial cubist drawing style. By the time she was about to graduate from elementary school, she was already doing portraits, and actually produced a replica of the Mona Lisa using her mother’s eyeliner.
High school found her busy joining poster-making contests and she adds that this was also her anime phase. She was bent on taking up animation as her college course but it was not yet offered at that time, so she enrolled in IT. While in college, she quit drawing and this continued when she found work at a call center.
Beatlemania
Mean cannot recall exactly when she began to pursue her dream of becoming “The Beatles Artist of Cebu.” However, she related that what she considers her first most significant piece of artwork was a charcoal portrait of John Lennon that she did in 2015 that sold for P3,000 plus shipping abroad.
Her fascination over The Beatles is not just with their music; She loves their sense of style as well. Her favorite Beatle is Sir Paul McCartney and her favorite song from the album Revolver is “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which I had never heard of. She believes the group’s most underrated song is “Hey Bulldog,” which she shared could not be performed live back then due to the complexity of its arrangement.
Darkness
There was a time in her life that she called her “gloomy years.” Her emotional state found its way in the four art pieces she worked on, while trying to find her way back to the “light” once again.
Mean is the type of artist who does not focus on making profit from her artwork. She wants to sell them to people who will find happiness in her labors of love. Her repeat customers of The Beatles art are mostly based abroad. She does not sell work she is not content with. She immediately discards them because she wants to give her patrons her best work.
She has also tried to paint landscapes as well but she feels discontented with the finished product. She tells me the reason she started to paint portraits was when she realized that commissioned work had become too costly for most people, and she wanted everyone to have access to art—to own one—so she set out on making it affordable.
Goals
She said she had tried to share her work with Sir Paul himself but had not been successful so far. Hopefully, any of the two living Beatles would be able to notice the level of devotion she has to them. Mean shared how she would still find happiness in painting The Beatles even if her works do not sell. In the past, she has been mocked for repeating the same subject but she ignores what other people say because she believes that the ups and downs of life lead us to our goals.
Mean revealed her goal: To be known as “The Beatles Artist of Cebu.” Young as she is, she surely has a lot of time to earn that title—she is getting there sooner rather than later.