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Lament of a Creator (Not an Artist)
I often get asked how I got so good at art, it’s an assumption really. The question requires one to assume that I worked to become this way, and implies the existence of a mentor. The brush in my hands is self guided, held only in my fingers. I assume I doodled so long in the margins they spread into a mural.
I cannot imagine a painting before I create it, I cannot see the colors in my head. I cannot grasp perspective, I cannot draw exact. I lack the basics needed to be an artist, and yet I create in spite. Perhaps it’s the red stubborn streak in me that makes me create my works fast and easily.
Some may say I have practiced grace when I move, but I am only painting. I think it luck, to be honest. I just wave my paint around and a picture forms, I don’t think my mind has room for talent.
I took one art class, I was no older than 11. She scolded me for holding a pencil wrong, for not understanding form, for writing messily, for never sketching. I failed that class, I wasn’t really an artist. My parents wondered for a while afterward how I’d failed. They’d seen the art strung up on my walls, they’d seen the canvases that littered the garage. I had no answer.
They often asked me to pursue art, I enjoyed it clearly and I had gotten some good commissions. My heart however, belongs to science. I often feel for those artists who ache to create, but instead are forced into a loveless bond with their careers, but I cannot relate. Being an artist isn’t my dream, but to sketch the stars from up close, perhaps can be.
I live to draw others, to draw their fantasies, to bring their imaginations to life. For even I have not the little projector in my mind, I have it in my fingertips. I wasn’t taught to be good at art, I didn’t practice, or do studies, or even try, I just drew. Perhaps I give myself too little credit.
A painting for my father, “KING”, referenced off the Connor Brothers work of the same name. He told me to add a “biggie crown” tilted right. When I sent him the photo of the finished painting he sent only one word back,
Vicious.
He is the starving artist I am not, I see how his eyes light up when he sees me work. I see a cocktail of envy and awe swirl in his eyes as he watches them form. I understand, he is the artist who suffers from the world, who clawed his way up, and discarded the excess weight. Now in his comfort, he is jealous, I do not blame him. He asks me the question a lot, “How did you get so good?”
He knows I have not an answer.
I have only two artists in my family. My Tio, my father’s brother, he taught me to spray paint. We aren’t very close, but I like to gift him drawings and he gifts me sketchbooks. I wonder if my father feels jealousy at him too.
And finally my mother. She paints flowers and trees, usually cherry blossoms. I used to ask her to paint with me, but as I grew, she found it irritating. I stopped asking. She isn’t envious like my father, but instead I see the same sadness she had in my young childhood. The kind she locked behind her bedroom door.
As I sign each piece with a scribbled version of my name that looks just artistic enough, I feel something complex. I call it ‘finis patior’, roughly meaning ‘I suffer the end’ in Latin. Like missing something that really hasn’t ended, but also being happy it’s over. Like nostalgia over a fresh wound. I’m sure I could define it with one word if I tried hard enough, but I won’t.
I cannot imagine a painting before I create it, I cannot see the colors in my head. I cannot grasp perspective, I cannot draw exact. I lack the basics needed to be an artist, and yet I create in spite. Perhaps it’s the red stubborn streak in me that makes me create my works fast and easily.
Some may say I have practiced grace when I move, but I am only painting. I think it luck, to be honest. I just wave my paint around and a picture forms, I don’t think my mind has room for talent.
I took one art class, I was no older than 11. She scolded me for holding a pencil wrong, for not understanding form, for writing messily, for never sketching. I failed that class, I wasn’t really an artist. My parents wondered for a while afterward how I’d failed. They’d seen the art strung up on my walls, they’d seen the canvases that littered the garage. I had no answer.
They often asked me to pursue art, I enjoyed it clearly and I had gotten some good commissions. My heart however, belongs to science. I often feel for those artists who ache to create, but instead are forced into a loveless bond with their careers, but I cannot relate. Being an artist isn’t my dream, but to sketch the stars from up close, perhaps can be.
I live to draw others, to draw their fantasies, to bring their imaginations to life. For even I have not the little projector in my mind, I have it in my fingertips. I wasn’t taught to be good at art, I didn’t practice, or do studies, or even try, I just drew. Perhaps I give myself too little credit.
A painting for my father, “KING”, referenced off the Connor Brothers work of the same name. He told me to add a “biggie crown” tilted right. When I sent him the photo of the finished painting he sent only one word back,
Vicious.
He is the starving artist I am not, I see how his eyes light up when he sees me work. I see a cocktail of envy and awe swirl in his eyes as he watches them form. I understand, he is the artist who suffers from the world, who clawed his way up, and discarded the excess weight. Now in his comfort, he is jealous, I do not blame him. He asks me the question a lot, “How did you get so good?”
He knows I have not an answer.
I have only two artists in my family. My Tio, my father’s brother, he taught me to spray paint. We aren’t very close, but I like to gift him drawings and he gifts me sketchbooks. I wonder if my father feels jealousy at him too.
And finally my mother. She paints flowers and trees, usually cherry blossoms. I used to ask her to paint with me, but as I grew, she found it irritating. I stopped asking. She isn’t envious like my father, but instead I see the same sadness she had in my young childhood. The kind she locked behind her bedroom door.
As I sign each piece with a scribbled version of my name that looks just artistic enough, I feel something complex. I call it ‘finis patior’, roughly meaning ‘I suffer the end’ in Latin. Like missing something that really hasn’t ended, but also being happy it’s over. Like nostalgia over a fresh wound. I’m sure I could define it with one word if I tried hard enough, but I won’t.
Published 2nd Jul 2024
Author's Note
I guess I’m just ranting. Creation is so bittersweet to me, it unearths strong feelings. I am a practicing stoic, but in art, I let my mind drip.
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