Word vomiting my thoughts today.

When did I decide I was an artist?

I was about 11 years old in the sixth grade. I did a blind contour drawing in a class activity and it was like my right brain unlocked for the first time 🤯

I had to beg my parents to take additional art classes since then. As I got older, went to art school, and embarked on a very meandering art journey, I just knew I didn't really know how to be any other way; artistic, expressive, inspired by all the things. Artist.

My biggest challenge has been to get to know who I am without the identity of Artist. And once I understood that, I then asked myself what kind of art did I actually want to make? What was it all for? And why do I need to make it?

I had put a lot of pressure on my work, myself, my goals. And I noticed like most artists, that as I grew and changed, so did my art. I used to feel a lot of shame and inadequacy around how it all felt so inconsistent until I realized I could still stand in my whole worth even with all the inconsistency, the hesitation, and the fears.

Once I wholeheartedly embraced the shadows and the highest expressions of myself, the process of creative expression got so much easier, fluid, and organic.

I love so many things about art and being an artist, even when it sometimes feels like a cursed existence. But I am realizing this way of living is basically the art itself, and I can surrender to that.

A painting gets to be complete at a stage an artist chooses to. Conversely, the artist themself acts as a painting that is a continuous work in progress, and what we get to witness is the snapshots, the paintings of life in frozen time, in between those moments of change.