I've been back in school for three days now, and its been miserable. Not only am I overwhelmed by the intensity of the workload (since we've only got a month left), but I'm also not sleeping much again. I'm up to my neck in homework assignments for the weekend, one of them being my final Abstract Expressionist painting for ART 326.
[practice paintings on Bristol board paper]
I paint because it is all I know. I paint because when I open my mouth to speak, I don't know what to say or how to say it. I paint because I can take any given moment from my reality and enclose it within a single frame, and have it there forever. I paint because it helps me let things go. I paint because of the sheer satisfaction of knowing that I've made something out of nothing. I paint because it comes naturally. I paint because it makes me feel okay. So why can't I get this? Every preliminary draft is utter shit. It's all shit. I have never struggled more with painting than I do now. I've always been somewhat skilled at art. I've never really had a problem with it like other people do. It's what I'm good at... Like how some poets can speak so powerfully, that the stars seem to shine brighter. Or how some dancers can emit grace and beauty and emotion through a flurry of movement. So even though I sometimes fail miserably at voicing myself, my paintings always succeed in expressing what I need to say. So why can't I do this? What am I doing wrong? For some reason, I can't grasp the technique. I don't understand it.
My brain is pounding like hammer in my head, screaming at me to render, to think, to draw from. The noise is so loud, that I can't even hear my heart, telling me that what I need is to stop thinking. What I need is to think and to feel.
On an unrelated note, I will be twenty in exactly a month. I hate it.
mkp.
