Since I was a kid, talking 5 or 6, my parents always told me it would be impossible to make a career in art and I remember thinking why can’t I be the exception? Why can’t you just support me and help me get there? I remember feeling on a gut level, that I had it in me I just needed the practice and investment.
To their credit they did initially support it. Until of course, they felt I had gotten too invested in my Sunday art class, and pulled me from enrollment.
Art was then something I did in secret, something I learned to feel ashamed of. I’d shove my drawings behind the couch to hide them. Lie about the time spent on art assignments. Feel shame at how only my art teachers ever had compliments for my work. But after I failed to get into the international baccalaureate program - a status symbol, I still woke up to my father ripping pages out of a notebook I had been sketching in, calling every single one trash.
Laughably, my dreams went from artist to animator to architect and finally settled on what could only make my parents proud - engineer. Each step a concession to their concerns until there was nothing left to concede.
“I’ve seen other peoples work, yours is nothing to even compare. You wouldn’t have gotten in.” Was all that was said after I submitted my final university applications.
Of course, after years of being forbidden to practice, of not receiving any support to pursue it, of course it was nothing to compare.
A topic that has come up a lot lately in my therapy sessions is this negativity I still feel towards art. If I feel bad that week due to poor engagement, I also feel shame at the loss of focus and misplaced priorities.
If I look at my work and think this is just awful, I then beat myself up not just for failing to make a good piece but for wasting time and for even caring about something like that. When art is useless why waste time trying to make it better.
But someone I met recently asked me why I didn’t quit my job right then and pursue this full-time.
I explained there were many reasons actually. The sense of instability I experience being one. Feeling beholden to the whims of an algorithm and a crowd terrifies me.
However, internally I felt disgust at their suggestion.
Today I realize, that perhaps at the bottom of all this shame, hatred, and loathing is grief. Grief that in the end my parents were right. That I couldn’t pursue this path. That try as I have, I squandered and missed.
I think I will never be allowed this. And it angers me. And it saddens me. Still I keep trying still I keep moving forward. Still I feel shame still I resist.
The same person then asked why all that mattered.
“I know how a true artist thinks and works, and I know myself. And I draw things to be pretty and safe and appealing. So I know I could never be a true artist.”
“No, you’re just a coward.”
“Yes. I am.”
