What and why.
I’m alright with words. Sometimes. However, I do prefer showing off art and let it do the talking, most of the time. Then I don’t have to do the scary part which sometimes involves sharing, or oversharing, personal feelings, or worrying something I’ve made isn’t authentic and personal enough and shouldn’t have been created at all, not to mention being shown to others. I feel like a kid holding up their drawing to a parent, hoping for some sort of validation. “I’m just another person looking to soothe their ego.” I think to myself. Always worried, always overthinking. (Right now I’m worried this comes of as whiny, and a bit too self-absorbed.)
Could it be that what I have to show you is simply more excessive stuff? More stuff added into the world that is already drowning in it. To be consumed quickly and then quickly forgotten. And yet I can’t help myself, I love creating and sharing what I draw, paint or otherwise conjure. I decide to share my work, despite my anxieties about where it all fits in, where I’m going with it and whether making something, maybe downright banal, because it made me happy at the moment, was an okay thing for me to do. I’ve conditioned myself to constantly be on the defense, trying to be prepared for all those questions someone might ask, but remain unasked. To try and somehow justify what I love to do. Yet, I can’t help but feel the alternative, not a single person being inclined to ask, to be even scarier. So I try to be more open. Who I am, what I do, why I do it. So maybe I myself can get over that deep embarrassment, gnawing in the back of my head, every time I share my work. I still feel reluctant to use the word “art“, another symptom of my own insecurity, perhaps.
Art to me is partially defined as a way of communication between humans and maybe, perhaps, being a sometimes lonely and anxious kid, who was not always able to properly express themselves, or not always having someone the same age to share personal thoughts with, found some solace in making, what debatably can be considered, art. There is naturally much more to it, and had my circumstances been different, I am confident I’d still ended up an art nerd. I was too obsessed with silly original characters based on my favourite games, comics and shows not to. I was in deep, man. That has not changed.
This space serves as my personal diary, so be prepared for an awful lot of navel gazing and me trying to get a better sense of self. Ramblings. I think I’m allowed to do that. It is my personal space after all, that I choose to share with perhaps a couple of readers, at most.
Cheers.
-JMS
