I have always painted. Well, painted and sculpted and danced and written.
For the longest time I preached a doctrine of “everyone’s an artist” but the truth is not everyone makes art. Some of us choose to hide while some of us never feel the pressing itch-behind-the-brain that makes me, and those like me, create actual things.
Perhaps some feel it and choose instead to play online games.
Some people are voracious readers. They say things like ” I read everything. I’ll read a shampoo bottle”. I’m a voracious creator: I will cannibalise cupboards and curtains for canvas. I will disassemble furniture for frames or a framework. I’ll melt everything in the house to make wax – to carve into the shape that’s itching in my brain.
There’s something a little fevered and sweaty and sordid about this process. For all that it’s ennobled by literature and academic musings. It’s an urge like the one for alcohol, or meat, or chocolate. I can see why it drives so many of us mad. When an idea is stuck in the gullet it can choke you.
My friends ad family are patient with my long absences; they show up with warmth and beverages when I finally emerge all bleary-eyed and delighted. I know I lose out on life every time I bury myself in this creative world – but alone in my studio with its familiar smells of solvents and burnt leather I am most myself. Still lost, but with an unnameable purpose. and I make all the things my little heart longs for.
