I am still surprised to find myself creating art. When I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer but, when I look back at my work, it was always more about the drawing itself than the clothing. I went to school for a year for fashion design, but that didn’t last and I left drawing behind until 2013. I started drawing again, as many of us do, to process deeply painful and confusing experiences that defied my attempts to journal and write.
I continued making personal art and it wasn’t until early 2016 that I started to make some of my work public. People responded positively, I kept drawing, and things took off during the second half of 2016. Fast forward to now and I often have more ideas queued up than I can draw or paint at any one time.
Thinking of myself as an artist, especially a successful working artist, is entirely new. Some days, I feel like I’m just walking along and suddenly it jumps out at me – BAM – and I’m surprised all over again. But part of our responsibility as humans is to exercise and celebrate the gifts we are given, and that’s what I’m doing.