I hate it when people who have known me all of five seconds see through all my crap and force me to look myself in the eye.
Have you ever noticed that when you meet someone new, you start to see yourself through their eyes a little bit? Sometimes it’s good (I am a fearless, creative, entertaining chick), sometimes it’s bad (I am an insane, fat and ugly weirdo with a too-loud laugh). But it’s usually enlightening either way.
So my new friend and I were discussing the arts, and I wound up making the big confession…
(whispered with shame)
“…art isn’t…really…my passion…”
That’s right. I said it.
Yes, people pay me for it. Yes, people seem to like what I paint and draw. Yes, I have a stupid website set up to show it off. (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Drea-M-Artwork-of-Andrea-MacMillan/10522416690 - I may be confused, but I’m not above shameless self-promotion.)
But it’s not my passion.
My passions are ~ Writing. Reading. Looking at other people’s art. Jumping out of airplanes. Falling in love. Quantum physics gets me kind of excited.
But making art? Well, lately, I’ve been putting off projects. I’ve been snarling at my paints. I’ve been acting like a snotty teenager with issues against authority. Art had become a party trick. Being passably talented at it began to feel like a burden. I felt like Frodo Fucking Baggins.
So what was my new friend’s response to this confession? What did this new friend say that has been niggling at me for two weeks?
When I said art wasn’t my passion, he said…(I have to pause here because it still kind of stuns me a little bit, even after this long – and it takes a lot to render me stunned)…
He said, with a burst of derisive laughter, “Why do you DO it, then?”
Hmmmph.
“Why do you do it, then?”
He laughed as he said it.
“Why do you do it, then?”
Boy, did I feel stupid.
“Why do you do it, then?”
Crap.
At the time, I babbled some semblance of an explanation, I suppose. I have no idea what I said. All I knew was that this guy – this really cool, smart, talented and kinda hot guy – thought I was a moron and I was starting to agree with him.
Well, I hate a mystery. So it’s been bugging me. Really bugging me.
I went for a few good long walks on the beach – which usually makes everything fall into place, but this time it was gonna take a bit more, it seemed. I pondered and pondered. I went back in my head, years and years, and reviewed all of the emotions I could summon up in respect to my art.
I remembered that when I was an angst-ridden teenager, I spent an inordinate amount of time locked in my bedroom listening to The Cure and drawing sketches of James Dean and Montgomery Clift. And I loved it. Those sketch pads filled with questionable likenesses of rather similarly angst-ridden rebels were like meditation for me. There was nothing to be gained from drawing them – it was just for me. The only challenge was to make the next one better than the last – and since I am really only competitive with myself, this worked rather well for me.
After I graduated and started acting, I forgot about drawing and painting. I just stopped. I had other outlets, I guess. When I finally did start again, it was purely on a whim.
I’m not even sure what it was that moved me, but I whipped off a painting in a rush on the way to a friend’s house – I took the painting as a gift. She loved it and has it hanging in her living room to this day. I was there recently and the sight of it moved me. I felt a surge of pleasure at seeing it – remembering how happy I was the day I painted it, how much fun it was to slap the paint on the paper. And you know what? It was because I didn’t care if it was any good. I was just having fun. I hadn’t even intended to ever show it to anyone.
When I began painting for real, it was under duress. I was fed up with acting. I was fed up with working for other people. I was all angst-y again and wanted to run away and live in the woods behind a 20-foot log wall like J.D. Salinger. (Okay, a part of me still kind of dreams of that…but I digress.) I decided to learn how to paint properly as a means to that end. I began getting commissions to do portraits – people, pets, houses, whatever. And I began worrying that my work wasn’t good enough to justify taking money for it. In fact, it was weeks before I cashed the first cheque I was given for a piece of artwork, because I was convinced they would take the painting home, hang it on the wall, realize how awful it was and ask for their money back. I was insecure!
Once the revelations started coming, they were swift and plenty.
It dawned on me that I hadn’t really painted or drawn anything since shattering my left (dominant) arm last year. It had been too painful to consider for much of the time since then, and I’d been putting it off and putting it off, even though I’d broken through most of the pain. I was a wimp!
And frankly, I have to admit that my life has been relatively angst-free (although this whole “Why do you do it, then?” deal has helped a bit in that department). I was happy!
Well, with renewed spirit, I decided to test myself.
I unwrapped a clean canvas. I dug out my paints. I discovered that most of them had dried out. I bought new paint. I bought new brushes, since my old ones were disgustingly hardened and adhered to the bottom of the water pitcher from the last time I’d painted…the day I went to the hospital for arm surgery last year (yeah, I know – I really need to clean my studio more often. Piss off.) I put Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on the stereo.
And then I spent the whole day painting. Not for clients. Just for me. And while I didn’t produce anything that I’m not likely to paint over eventually rather than waste the canvas, I did gain something.
I remembered why I paint.
