Art Journey

What can I do with my Art?

Art used in this post can be found on my Instagram

A question that keeps me up at night is this: what am I trying to do with my art?  The naive answer is to make myself happy. A more detailed answer expresses how I feel operating within the working world.  I have never fit in at traditional employment. Most of my job experience is either in general labour or food service. Industries that are highly racialized, poorly compensated and mind-numbingly dull. Knowing that my position was intentionally hindering my potential, I would drink and use to self-soothe.  Now that I am no longer at the mercy of such industries, I use my current coercion to improve my art. Today I reflect on what I want to do with my art.

Getting out of my head

My Youtube Channel is a Work in Progress

Being racialized, I’ve developed a personality that comes off as antagonistic. To never call out the indignities I experienced contributed to my alcoholism and depression. My introversion and racialized status have made it impossible to rely on people for career advancement.  I do not trust that others have my best interest at heart when working. I do the bare minimum and no longer want to bring my best. So I isolate and draw.  I draw because I don’t have to be this false persona. I honestly can not care about its bottom line when working for it limits my own social mobility. Why should I make them money at the expense of my potential?  I know that working makes me despise talking. The injury from those social experiences never fully healed. It causes me psychological pain and rage when I have to talk to people. It is frustrating listening to others’ problems or even having them say hello. I don’t want to be around people, period.  I have no desire to get back out there and force myself to be miserable again. I would rather risk the poverty of a failed dream than the indignity of a career. The wounding was that bad.

Art helps me communicate.

One of my first Digital Paintings

In drawing and writing, and I don’t have to be around people. I don’t have to prove my worth to people to pursue an interest. There are plenty of books, videos and articles that help me avoid the pain of social interactions.  In creating, I’m learning to communicate with others again without the baggage that comes with talking. When I draw or write, I’m not hung up about what others think of me. I don’t have to go through the torture of small talk.  I am my truest self when I create. No gimmicks or buzzwords, just 100 percent me. A person who is disinterested in the mediocrity of consuming.  I say more writing words and drawing pictures than I do talking.  Sizing up a person makes talking unpleasant. Being alone, I don’t have to perform for anybody. I get to be alone with my thoughts, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted out of life.  Drawing and writing allow me to express the world as I see it without gaslighting. I get to put my time into something that makes me better. Talking with strangers has always disturbed my mental well-being.

I can’t be myself when I talk, yet it’s the only acceptable way to get things in life. By writing, drawing and making videos, I am relearning to talk without the hell of other people. By creating, I can talk without experiencing social pain. Laugh if you must, but you’re just proving my point that hell is other people. Creating art removes that hell. Writing means I have enough time to craft what I want to say properly.

Art Helps Me See Things

Hopefully, this turns into a masterpiece

Another benefit of diving deeply into my art education is re-learning how to observe things in real life. One of my greatest struggles in art education is copying what I see. For many years, I had followed the advice of drawing every day, and that advice, while helpful, didn’t solve my underlying problem. I didn’t know how to see what I was drawing. Here’s an example of how I used to draw. Notice anything? They all seem flat and stiff, aka unconvincing.

I didn’t know how to draw what I was seeing. In fact, the logical part of my brain, the left hemisphere, was trying to focus on categorizing whatever I had seen instead of making the markings accurately on paper. Education is the cause of this deficit. My schooling focused on rote memorization of facts and submission to authority. The result of this is that the parts of my brain responsible for spatial/visual relations are intentionally reduced at best or eliminated at worse.

Art helps engage that suppressed thinking mode. When I make marks on a page, I’m intentionally quieting the logical part of my brain that frustrates me when my art doesn’t look convincing. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards, taught me to de-activate the L-mode thinking and engage R-mode thinking. Learning to make that cognitive shift to put what I see and not what I think I see improved the quality of more than deliberate practice. It will refine both concepts to reach a skill level that I am comfortable with.

 

Art prevents me from settling.

From 100 Heads and Faces by Chris Legaspi

Drawing quiets the existential dread I feel when I believe I am settling in life. Part of me thinks that I have settled in some areas of my life, and when I have those thoughts, I end up procrastinating from creating art. And when I procrastinate on art, I am doing myself great harm. I know that this is one thing I want to do with my life. Employment eats away at your motivation. I have to remember that I am being robbed when I sign in to employment. Every day that those minutes pass is precious time wasted for no good reason. All to make a pittance and to stretch that poor sum to survive. This will not be my life.

I know I will only have one chance to live the life I want, and I have to take it. I hope that my journey inspires you to do the same.

Until next post.