What I mean when I call myself an artist
Five years ago, I was leaving a job working on a farm and I had no idea what was next. All I knew was that I didn't want to work for anyone else anymore. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would want my life to look, how I would see myself surviving capitalism. The only thing that truly felt like it fit was to be an artist.
Now, just to be clear, I had little to no artistic technical skills. I barely survived a semester in my high school required art class. In college, I took a watercolor class because it was free, but I dropped out after two classes because it was hard and college was stressful. I later took a ceramic class but never really got past the 'lopsided and wobbles when set on a table' pot making phase. So for me to decide that I wanted to be an artist was unexpected, but for some reason I can't explain it just felt right.
I knew people in my life would want to know about my artistic abilities when I told them of my plans to be an artist (how well I could draw, what could I paint, etc.), so I told no one of this dream for the first few months. I chose a medium that I *thought* would be easy to learn, metal, and I started creating jewelry with the help of YouTube tutorials.
During that time, I was highly influenced by the people in my life with the loudest opinions. Once I started sharing what I was making with people I knew, almost everyone had ideas about what my jewelry should look like, what beads I should use, how I should market my creations. I was always pursuing outside approval and I ended up making jewelry that I didn't even want to wear myself. It wasn't until the end of my jewelry making journey, when I had stopped selling online or in person and had stopped sharing my jewelry with family, that I was able to make what I wanted. I bought a vintage metal stamping set and started making simple earrings that had phrases that meant something to me like "fat and happy" and "fuck you".
About the time I stopped making jewelry, I started picking up my watercolor paints again (the ones left over from the watercolor class I took in college). Starting out, I would just mix colors and paint little squares. Then I started trying to paint things I saw in nature like leaves, trees, and landscapes. I felt frustrated because I couldn't get what was in my head out on paper. It wasn't until this past summer that I started looking at tutorials on YouTube and oh, how my world opened up. It was so exciting. I finally started learning the techniques that I needed to make the image in my head appear on paper and I was hooked.
The days I paint are my happiest days. It doesn't matter what it is, whether I am painting something I see or following a tutorial or painting a rainbow for the tenth time that month. Mixing the colors, watching the strokes appear on the page, waiting for the paint to dry- ugh, I love it all! Of the little joy I experience these days, painting accounts for the majority of it.
I have been hesitant to call myself an artist. I always felt like I was an aspiring artist, but I had to reach a certain level of technical skill to be able to actually call myself an artist. Over the years of this journey I realized that to me being an artist is more of a mindset, a feeling, a way of existing in the world, than it is a job description. To me, being an artist is about how I see the world, how I interact with the world, much like being queer.
I am sure there is some online critic with a master's degree in fine art rolling their eyes, but who the fuck cares. Anyone can be an artist if they say they are. I don't have to share my art on the internet. I don't have to be able to create the perfect photo-realistic painting of my dog. I am an artist. Maybe one day I will share my art online, maybe I will always keep it to myself. I have been through a lot in my twenty eight years here on this planet, and I share my story through creating art.
Being an artist comes out in so many different parts of my life, in what I paint, yes, but also in the photos I take, how I write my story, how I view the world. It's in my bones, it just took me so many fucking years to realize it.
Let's be friends! What do you do that brings you joy in your life? Have you ever felt like an imposter in something you were doing?
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