Art

Ever since I was a child I have always felt the need to express myself artistically. When I was young this expression was manifested through visual art. I spent most of my waking days illustrating the world around me. It was no secret to my family that I was artistically inclined. My parents in particular appreciated my art more than anyone. But although they consistently praised every picture that I produced I never felt as though I was satisfied with anything that I drew or painted. It was never good enough.  

I was a realist through and through. I wanted to capture images in a detail just as crisp and comparable as what my eyes perceived. However, I was seldom able to do so. I would draw and redraw a particular detail a hundred times over just to get it right. Many times I would rub away an entire eraser just trying to complete one minute detail. It was in those moments when, after many failed attempts,  frustration would begin to set in. Tension would fill my strokes. The tip of my pencil would penetrate deeper and deeper into the paper, until finally my failures were etched into the paper itself. And though I tried, these were the marks that couldn't be erased. I would turn the pencil on its eraser and then rub to no avail. On one occasion, when working on a picture of a wolf, I was having a particularly hard time illustrating a satisfactory nose. In my frustration I erased a hole right through the paper itself. It now seems ironic to me to observe that when no paper remains, neither do any of the mistakes; the indelible marks of failure.  

This process occurred on many occasions; inspiration, failure, further attempts, further failures, frustration. Though I couldn't see it myself, I was told that I had an innate talent for visual art. When in elementary school I won a contest that awarded me with lessons at an art institute near where I lived. Later on I began entering my pictures in various art contests and placed first more than several times, though I honestly couldn't see why.     

Over the years, though the task was never mastered, I became much better at capturing detail. The best I could do in my own eyes was make something satisfactory, never anything exceptional. But it was then that a new vexation emerged in my art. I then began finding that, in my obsession with detail, there was an adverse neglection of the bigger picture. This problem could only be perceived after the completion of a picture when I surveyed my work only to find that the larger image was slightly askew. Though the details in and of themselves were satisfactory, I would find that I had failed to properly coordinate them to each other. Unlike the problem of accurately capturing detail, this problem was one that I never sought to correct. Rather, I slowly turned from expressing myself through visual art all together, the urge for expression remaining all the while. 

Now, I want to be a writer.