I used to want to go to art school.
Paintbrush in hand as colors splashed across a blank canvas, I felt free and uninhibited, lost in a world of beauty and light.
I was sure that I was made to be an artist.
Then I started taking AP art classes, and little by little I felt my freedom slipping away. I was no longer allowed to create as I pleased. Instead everything had to fit into the confines of “originality."
I wasn't sure what that word even meant, but I grew to hate it.
I pictured a completely blue canvas with a small square in the right hand corner which somehow stamped it as ‘original.’
I heard art instructors stressing the word so often that it became almost paralyzing.
The pressure to be original sucked the joy out of it for me, because the only thing I knew how to do was to replicate the beauty I saw in the world, which felt undoubtedly unoriginal.
In trying to be original, I lost myself.
And so, I gave up art.
But the same awful word continued to haunt me.
In writing… in music… even in issues of identity and style.
I didn’t have the humorous flavor or quirky taste of ‘original,’ artsy folk. I felt just like everyone else – a teenager trying to fit into the world, not stand out.
Defeated, I abandoned creativity altogether, focusing instead on math and science where I knew that there was only one right answer. A place where I was never measured by the bar of originality.
Five years later, after a long journey of identity searching and uprooting fears, the artist in me is beginning to peak out once again.
I hear God speaking it over me in the quiet places:
You were made to create….
your voice matters…
you always were and always will be:
an artist.
Little by little, I am returning to that shameless child who saw beauty in the world and could lose herself for hours attempting to capture it.
I’ve started painting again.
But this time not often with oil or watercolor, but rather with stories, photographs, letters, spoken exhortations, adventures, character and every piece of who I am.
I no longer care about originality, what I care about is truth.
I want to paint truth as often as possible and in every way imaginable.
The world NEEDS truth. It doesn’t need more abstract paintings or pointless satire. It needs real, vulnerable messages that open our eyes and bring freedom.
I stumbled upon a quote the other day by my favorite author (one of the most original writers of all time), saying this:
I love that.
Because it gets to the heart of why he created.
It wasn’t to be original, to gain fame or recognition, but to communicate truth – which he did with unparalleled success.
When I walk away from his work, I can’t stop thinking about the picture or story he painted, not because of it’s originality, but because of the profound wisdom resonating from it.
C.S. Lewis is completely original. But he didn’t become original by setting out to be so. He became original by communicating truth in the best, most effective way that he knew how.
And that has become my aim as well.
The reality is that no message is truly original. Truth is as ancient as time itself, and I guarantee every truth has already been discovered and expounded on by someone, somewhere, sometime. "There is nothing new under the sun", as Solomon would say.
But that doesn’t matter. Because the way in which truth is communicated is different every time.
Sometimes it takes a dozen methods of communication before a truth actually sinks in. It pops up in a story, then in a sermon, is captured in a photograph, coined on a postcard, spoken over coffee and finally it is handed to us in a letter and suddenly: it clicks.
And when truth hits home, something inside shifts.
All of those voices were important, even if they were essentially saying the same thing.
As humans we all communicate differently, and the more voices speaking truth the better. The more people painting a picture of who God is, the more opportunities for the world to happen upon something that may actually change them.
THAT is why I have decided to start painting again, with every breath I take and each word I speak.
I want to communicate of truth.
I’m not going to strive for originality or worry ‘two-pence’ if what I’m saying has already been said. I’m simply going to share what's on my heart in truest, most honest way possible.
Every voice matters. Let's together be artists of truth today.
*photo credit: pinterest.com
