Why Art?
Do you do Art? In any form? Writing? Painting? Ceramics? Cooking? Crafting? Think back to the beginning, when did you start and why? We usually start sooner than you think.
Art is Creation: creating or recreating something you love, capturing a feeling or moment, or memorializing something that moves you. At the age of 2, my Mother found me using the only resources I had to to paint the walls of my crib and nursery and myself….my excrement. I can only imagine, that other than the smell, it had a nice texture as I applied it to changing the color of my world. Imagine the horror or applaud the creativity.
Art is Expression: to proclaim your voice, a message, or to promulgate something you need to say. At the age of 8, house bound for a week with a severe flu, I called upon my Brownie merit badge training and picked up a crotchet needle and some extra bright yellow and red yarn and started to fashion a skirt and poncho. I was so proud of this ostentatious outfit, I insisted on wearing it to school the next week.
Art is Learning: to recreate or enhance a skill you wish to possess. At the age of 10, I remember being fascinated by my Aunt Jeanette. She was a consummate crafter. I would wonder thru her house as the adults talked, examining her creations. I think it was probably the first time I did the…. “I could do that” self talk. Aunt Jeanette introduced me to decoupage and I returned home to create my own from scraps of wood as a canvas, greeting cards with pictures of cats, tin foil, and Elmer’s glue. (About 10 years later, my Mother and Father rediscovered the masterpieces selling at a local craft show….they had donated them away to a thrift store. lol)
As many of us have as kids, I made pot holders, jewelry with a real solder gun, imprinted leather with tools and a hammer, burned wood with an engraver, captured leaves and coins in resin molds, and sketched using comic strips and seventeen magazines as my models.
Art is Sharing: Showing the world who we are and what is important in our lives that we feel the need to lend our voices. Along the way, we never consider our productions art nor ourselves as artists. Life gets in the way….we go to college, get our first real jobs, get married, have kids, focus on fitness, a million things slow our artwork to a slow trickle, yet I look around the house and I find paintings, collages, hand sewn outfits, crocheted hats, culinary experiments, and photographs captured in albums and on my phone from this time period of several decades.
Today, I am in my second Spring and my time with art is revived, more purposeful. I have more choice where I spend my time. I don’t feel the need to be busy or live up to the expectations of others nor of the world. If you create art in any form, you let go, you are free. I encourage you to join me, set some time for you, eliminate the distractions. Don’t be self critical, just create, step back, observe, edit, revise, and go again. Tell you inner negative voice (mine is name Kristie) to “shut the @$*@(* up!” and send her into the corner to sulk on her own. Let Nakita (My inner free spirit voice) go at it! If it’s all for you, great. If you may want to share it, no one can argue. They may love it and they may loathe it. In the end, it is your personal perspective, uniquely yours. Be Brave, share it and with it expose yourself. Let others learn a little bit more about you and hear your story through your works.
Art is Creation,
Art is Expression,
Art is Learning, and
Art is Sharing.
