My Art

I think Kate has given me so many new insights into my life, that I could probably write blog entries for days. But today I'll just do one more, and then mull over if any others are blog worthy for another day.
All my life I have been surrounded by people I consider artists. My mother draws excellently, and often made her own birthday cards for my dad by copying down characters and inserting her own brand of humor. As a I child I liked to color, but even then I knew I wasn't as good at it as the other kids. On top of that, craft projects had tormented me from a very early age. I distinctly remember being in kindergarten, trying to make a construction paper witch, and not being able to do as well as the other kids because I couldn't cut my triangle to look right since the right handed scissors I had been given didn't work correctly for my left-handed self. Of course when I was little I didn't realize this wasn't my fault. I thought there was something wrong that I couldn't make the scissors work like the other kids could (it looked so easy when they did it!) So from a very early age I had trouble believing I could ever have any artistic talent.
My friend Kim started showing exceptional drawing talent in about 4th grade. She could draw the prettiest horses I'd ever seen, and she started doing pictures of mythical beasts that just amazed me. Kim taught me to draw a pretty good looking horse (for a 4th grader) but it often frustrated me to watch her give visual birth to the flights of fancy in her head while I, equally enamored with fantasy and with plenty of creatures and characters of my own kicking around in my head, couldn't give equal treatment on paper to what I wanted to see become real before my eyes.
I started playing piano when I was 6, and for many years it was just something I did. I practiced, I did okay, but at my first or second recital I realized that I had terrible performance anxiety. Yet another venue of being an artist seemed closed to me.
In high school I learned that on top of my friend Kim, my friends Justin, Thomas, and Maria were also quite talented at drawing. They would all make beautiful pictures for me and I would sigh over the talent I envied but didn't possess. Many times I tried to make myself learn to draw but I never got very far. It just wasn't my gift.
When I graduated from high school I realized that my largest strength seemed to be music from the 12 years of piano lessons and 7 years of orchestra I had gone through. And I really loved music, but I got far more delight out of listening or playing in a group, than individual performing. Still, I had no idea what I wanted to do in college and it was the only thing I really had to go off of, so I decided to go to Otterbein and be a music major.
This turned out to be the hardest blow to my self-esteem as an aspiring artist, and almost cemented my belief that I could never achieve that dream. At Otterbein in a way I never had before, I was surrounded by musicians and art and dance students with whom we shared the building. Everywhere around me were people who could sing so beautifully it broke your heart, play songs on an instrument without music, dance with breathtaking rhytmn, or draw, paint, or sculpt things the likes of which I had never dreamed. The person I became closest to then was my friend Jenni, and she had incredible talent as well at painting and photography. All around there was so much to admire, and sometimes it made me sad that I couldn't feel like I was a part of any of that.
It was so frustrating for me because I felt that I had an artistic soul. Although I didn't understand a lot of what people meant when they talked about art, I was interested in most mediums and loved to watch and listen and admire whatever anyone talented created. Before I got to college I kept thinking I could find a way to be an artist, but Otterbein shattered that. I got to take voice lessons for the first time, and loved to sing, but there were so many others who were so much better and I realized I would need years of formal training to take the raw love and basic proficiency and turn it into something more. And as my piano juries ground in deeper and deeper, my performance anxiety had become almost crippling. I had memory blanks when performing for the faculty as part of my grade.
On top of that almost all the singers and instrumentalists I knew were so daggone arrogant. They thought they were all going to be God's next gift to the world of music and that just didn't fit at all with my quiet, self-deprecating persona.
The next year I switched majors and colleges, to study political science, history, and geography at OSU. Gone now were my dreams of being an artist. I thought maybe I'd be a teacher or something else instead. After all, performance had proved to not be for me, and to be surrounded by so many with such amazing gifts was just too overwhelming. I had taken a line from the book "Little Women" to heart-"Talent isn't genius and no amount of hard work can make it so." I tried to find another way in life for myself.
I graduated from college with my social studies degree and absolutely no idea what I wanted to do in life anymore. I had developed a deep love for politics and political discussion, but there were no careers in that field that seemed suitable to me. Married and very happy with my situation, with no pressure to immediately employ myself thanks to my wonderful husband, I started to try and find myself again. I eventually took up flower arranging under the instruction of a florist, thanks to my wonderful friend Amanda who pushed me to try and do something I'd always thought about but never been brave enough to try. I was surprised to find for the first that I felt I was good at something that seemed so arts and crafty, and I enjoyed flowers as a new hobby. I started to feel like maybe I could be a little artistic.
And then my beautiful friend Kate opened up an insight to me that I can't believe I have been missing for so long. You see, I am already an artist. I have been since I was 14.
Writing is my art.
I had never before thought of writing as an artistic medium. For years I filled up notebooks with fantasy, fan fic, and narratives, without ever considering it to be anything impressive or important. It was just a silly hobby I had. I knew I felt compelled to write continuously, and so I did, but I never stopped to examine why.
What Kate helped me see is that my writing has always been my true artistic outlet. I write because I need to. It's the only way I can truly get out all the dreams and thoughts and feelings in my head and heart. No, I can't draw or paint beautiful pictures showing the things I imagine inside my head. But I can use words and the wonderful power of adjectives to describe what I see in my brain and give everyone the opportunity to paint their own picture and enjoy it in their own way. I've always been amazed at the power of words, and the wonderful places a good description can take you. I think that's part of the reason why I love playing the game "Apples to Apples" so much. It's a constant exercise in using words to convey images, impressions, and even humor to people. Playing with words has always been one of my chief joys.
Writing is just as much a outlet for me as painting is for people like Kate or drawing is for people like Kim and Justin, or any kind of music is for people like the talented students at Otterbein I left behind.
I used to think writing was just a dumb hobby I had. I never fully understood why when I first started, if I went long periods without writing anything, I would get depressed and sad and feel frustrated without knowing why. Now I know it was my artistic outlet, my way to express all the important things running through my head that would stifle me if I didn't allow them to come out on paper and help me come to terms with whatever I was struggling with.
Like happens in art and music, not all of my writing is very good. I don't always or even often produce gems. When I first started my blog, after the first several posts, I went a long time without writing anything because I felt I couldn't think of a clever way to say what I was thinking, and it got me really down until one day my post "Falling in Love With Love" burst out of me and I saw that even though it was technically unimpressive, it was so relieving to get out what I'd been needing to say all this time! Kate has taught me to see that what's most important isn't quality, but just doing it for the sake of giving your thoughts, feelings, and soul the outlet it needs.
And it makes sense for writing to be my medium, because it's the least performance related of arts that I can think of. I can do my writing on my own time and choose not to show it to anyone until I think it's ready. I don't have to memorize, and the final product can be loved by one person and hated by another. I don't need a room full of people clapping or admiring my words. Just knowing that even one person likes my writing, or that what I wrote meant something to someone, has always been enough for me. Writing is the perfect artistic expression for me.
Thanks Kate for helping me find my art. I'm so much happier for it.