| OCR Text |
Show skepticism, wondering why I didn't just leave. I could write those stories, but it is not important to know the details of the shame in my silence. What is important is from that silence came drawing. That drawing became printmaking, which became painting. These were all my secret journals, each mark, and etch, and stroke documented all that I could not say. Each mark, and etch, and stroke became emblematic of time passed, of time I was wasting, and soured hope. As much as I would prefer not to share that part of my life with anyone, it is an important part of the narrative. It is a universal part of my narrative. I think the human experience, collectively, has been drawn to draw and make as a way to process, document, manifest. My past is also the reason I am in the very place that I am now: writing my project paper. **** What it comes back to is this: Regardless of any definition I have ever read or been told, I have always run away from calling myself an Artist. And yet, when I stumbled upon this quote from E.E. Cummings' speech on the Artist and his Agony, it was as if he were talking about me. Indeed, the Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself; and the agony of the Artist, far from being the result of the world's failure to discover and appreciate him, arises from his own personal struggle to discover, to appreciate and finally to express himself. (Cummings 68,98) Quite literally, I walked away to unlearn what I have learned, and into the unknown. Friends have certainly been what have kept me afloat, but ultimately I walked away from what I have ever known of relationships, intimacy, trust, and love. The history of unkindness that I share with myself has shaped a person I cannot claim to know very well, so I turned to what I do know. I make. I draw. I paint. Not only to process the world around me, but to process, and to understand the stranger with whom I share my body. Thanks to E.E. Cummings, despite great reluctance, I guess I might as well start calling myself an Artist. 21 |
