Blog P@$$word: WheninAsia
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to have the talent to be an artist. I have seen countless paintings done by my grandmother, with exact and precise details resulting in such amazing, realistic images. My mother, though not as finely detailed as my grandmother, is also a very talented painter. My mom also creates through food, hospitality, making jewelry, and countless other mediums. In desperate attempts to live up to their potential, I have tried painting, food, jewelry, and quite a few other things.. and have never reached “artist” level in any. I never found something that brought me joy, gave me something that I wanted to do in my free time. All of the things I tried were work to me.. and while I could sometimes produce decent end products, I rarely (almost never) achieved anything I deemed artist worthy. My perfectionist self would slave for hours or days trying to make the small details perfect, and never reaching this elusive perfection. I even took a drawing class in college, “learning” to draw with everything from pencil, to charcoal, to oil pastels, to India Ink and Bamboo Brush. While I enjoyed the class, looking back at pictures of my work I still cringe at the …. awkwardness of my art.
Some of my Awkward College Art
More Awkward College Art
Yet I could never ignore the burning desire within me to create. I was desperate, but I could never find anything that I felt satisfied that desire. I cried to myself, cried to my mom, cried to my roommates, cried to Papa.. WHY did I have such a desire to create yet could never produce anything “good enough”?!
As I drew closer to Launch for the World Race, I decided that this would be the year. I WOULD figure out how to be an artist this year. I hoped that a new setting would surely spark something new and release the dam that had been holding back all my creative potential all these years. I invested in art supplies, rented art books from the library of different styles of art, stalked Pinterest… but still wasn’t “feeling it” before Launch. My first month and half on the race were more of the same. I tried to push through and paint anyways, but still was highly dissatisfied with my work.
Then half way through Month 2 in Nepal, my squad was given the opportunity to attend a “worship through art” class. I figured, “Hey, why not? What can it hurt?” The answer was…. everything. Sitting in that third story room, Papa wrecked my world and broke the chains that held me back from the being I knew all along that I was called to be. That morning, Papa whispered into my ear that I was indeed an artist ….. and with that one whisper, the dam was broken. That day, I learned that my problem all along was that I was trying too hard.
-I was trying to be a perfectionist.
-I was trying to be a realist.
-I was trying to be detailed.
When that was never who I was created to be. I have always had an abstract mind.
-I rarely see things or think about things in the traditional way.
-My dreams are wide and sweeping.. with not enough attention to the small details.
-Big picture ideas are far more important to me than the exact details that make things picture perfect.
Yes, I am a perfectionist… but I am even more of an abstract representations of my Papa.. in whose image I was created. So why have I been trying to be the type of artist that I don’t represent. Sure, there are thousands of artists that show the detailed, precise nature of our Papa… but I was created to show things in a different light.
And in that moment.. I went from a closet creator to an artist. The reality was, I was an artist all along.. I just never felt confident enough in my work to claim myself as an artist.
This is the painting I created during the w*rship as art class. True to abstract form.. it is open to interpretation. I personally think it is a lamp, but I’ve gotten lots of really cool interpretations of it. What do YOU think it is?!
