Mixed Media Feelings
I once aspired to be an artist. I was young and had all these feelings inside of me that needed to be let out. I did not understand those feelings, where they came from, what they meant, how they were pushing me and pulling me like the tides rolling in and out every day. I just knew I needed to let them out. I needed to let them out somewhere outside of me onto something. I loved buying new art supplies especially the physical sensation of having them in my hands: the mix of wax and paper as I rolled new crayons through my fingers; the crinkle of plastic as I opened up a new container of pens, smudging my hands as I pulled off the caps; the rough texture of a fresh sheet of paper as I would glide my fingertips across its surface envisioning a whole new world and endless possibilities in front of me. My parents never really denied me my artistic expression, only at times complaining about the cost and the accumulated waste. In fact, maybe seeing something different in me already that I did not know myself and knowing that I was not enjoying the recreational sports they signed me up for before, enrolled me in drawing classes one summer through the local youth programs, diligently dropping me off and picking me up a few times a week spending the car ride home asking me how I liked it.
In high school, I took every art class imaginable. From drawing to painting to photography to pottery, I was in those rooms sitting on backless stools near every day, my elbows resting on large wooden tables filled with years of spilled paint, stray marks, and indents from artists past. I felt connected to those in my classes — many of us taking the same levels for years with the same teachers. I learned how light changes our point of view, how objects do not have a binary of just dark and light but a gradient of values that stretch across their surfaces. I learned to control my brush strokes as I painted with unforgiving watercolors, thinking from lightest to darkest. I learned to mix and match paints, to blend and brush and layer. I learned to create a point of view, cutting a little square out of a piece of paper and holding it up to the world like a filmmaker does a camera. I learned to use my pencil tip as a way to gauge perspective, to see how to translate what my eye sees onto the paper for others to see as well in a believable way. As the years progressed, I experimented more and felt the creative juices flowing freely. I spent hours writing out words like face, hair, eye, hair, face, cheek, lips, tongue overlapping and overlaying over and over and over and over to create dimension and value on a portrait of a friend. I played magician as I hit broad strokes of chalk pastels on a green textured paper, letting the viewers’ eyes blend colors and from those strokes a forest and stream appeared. I gravitated towards reds and blues and purples mimicking the contradictory feelings I had within myself, that I was a mix of those pent up reds and those mellow blues and I existed somewhere in those shades of purple.
Something happened years later and I’m not sure what. I stopped doing art. From time to time I would doodle, but the desire to create intricate pieces or to put so much of myself out there was gone. I was not motivated nor did I have the energy to dedicate hours to my craft. I had to think about the future and college and a job and my life. For years after, family and friends would lament the fact that I was no longer doing any art. They talked about how lovely my work was or how much they appreciated it and it just made me feel sadder that it was gone for me. I couldn’t access that part of myself anymore. I put my artwork away, zipping up my artist bag and shoving those pieces back in the closet in my parent’s home. Still, sometimes I look at those pieces and marvel at the person I used to be: one who felt his feelings so deeply, who said he had a point-of-view to share, who was not bound by obligation or the daily grind of life. I look at those brushstrokes and I remember where I was in those years. I remember my confusion about myself about not knowing who I was or what I wanted to be or how I wanted to go on and live the rest of my life. I had energy and creativity that I poured onto the page hoping that one day I’d look at it and really understand what I was trying to say. I painted and drew leading lines on landscapes — with roads and streams and sidewalks and trees pushing the eye somewhere out beyond the horizon, somewhere unknown, somewhere you’d only be able to see as you journeyed closer to it.
Some people say I’m hard to read, that when they look at my face they see the opaque unknowable. They never know how I feel. They see that there’s more that lies beneath but it’s inaccessible. My feelings to me are pragmatic. They are and they aren’t. They’re facts. I’m happy. I was sad. I concretely pull from the depths of myself these bricks and use those bricks to build a wall. The wall protected me for years. But, the wall can’t hold. Within myself, I feel these feelings bursting forward pushing against my chest out into the world. There’s no hole for them to burst through. There’s no window or doorway or backstreet or alleyway. There’s nothing. They build and they collect and they ache to be expressed and let out. They mix and blend and compound. They age and grow and yearn to see the light, to see the world, to be viewed by others who may feel as they feel who may understand their complexity and nuance. Their frustration is my frustration. I want them out. I want them visible. I want them to be heard and seen and I want them to bind with others to pull us closer in intimacy and vulnerability and humanity and all the social parts of ourselves that keep us together. But I don’t know how to anymore.
At one point in my artist’s journey, I learned that if you spend too much time hunched over looking at your art that you can’t see what’s plainly there. You may wonder why things don’t look right or why the painting doesn’t match what you envisioned in your mind’s eye. You wonder if a brushstroke is out of place, or the perspective is off, or the colors don’t blend right, or if the composition is askew. You stare endlessly into a painting you’ve already been looking at for hours. The best advice I ever heard was to stand at a distance and view your art from another angle. The advice continues to say that if that doesn’t help you see your issue, turn your artwork upside down. Our brain plays tricks on us sometimes. We get so used to seeing things one way, we forget that there are other ways to see the world. To turn the world on its head makes us question what we assumed to be normal and unchangeable.
What worked for me those many years ago no longer works for me now, and that’s okay. I’m turning my world upside down. I’m reexamining myself and how I express myself and where to channel my feelings. I want to create art again. But I’ve changed. And the way I create that art needs to change too. I’ve always thought artists and writers were mutually exclusive. As if layering and blending and painstakingly putting words together to create a visual image, a perspective, a specific point-of-view wasn’t art. I was wrong. It is. For so long what has been plainly in front of me has alluded me. I’ve been thinking about writing stories, something I’ve never done before. I have too much to express. I have so much to say. I want to put everything inside of myself somewhere out there, somewhere tangible. I want others to see those feelings too, to relate or not relate, to understand me deeply. I want to be known.