why i art

I’m writing this because no one asks. No one has asked and I don’t think anyone will be asking for the foreseeable future. That is usually a question we ask children: why do you like to draw? maybe, instead. Well, I often find myself doing or making something or reading something extremely hard to understand (for other people), and I ask myself why I do what I do. So I figured I’ll write about it this time around. Maybe the next time the question comes up for me, I’ll think about this. 

I art because this is the best way for me to learn. And I think it’s an exceptional way to learn. I think making art is more than just making art; it’s a way to practice empathy and compassion, it’s a way to embrace and investigate cultures, and it’s a way to get curious about avenues of the world or your personal psyche that otherwise would be overlooked. I think art is science and artists are scientists and investigators, always extending the boundaries. I don’t think pushing them, but extending them. Uncovering, rediscovering constantly where a different boundary lies for anything from written language to color combination to character development. I think art is a social science and I art because I have to keep studying. It’s an intellectual pursuit. I learn one technique, method, medium, then I play with it until I get to a fork in the road. The paths are just more things to learn.That’s one reason.

Another reason no one asked for is because it’s the only thing I know how to do with such confidence that I don’t want to do anything else. It’s the only thing I do that I can think back to any past version of myself and see myself doing. In other words, it’s the only thing I’ve ever done consistently with a genuine passion. I’ve done it while no one was looking. I’ve done it while everyone was looking. I’ve done it just because I felt super alive and I’ve done it to keep myself alive. Emphasis on the latter. Even with no one around me and the worst things happening in the world, and in my mind, I’ve always resorted to art. I found a short poem I wrote a while ago:

I used to write stories about how I wanted to die but named the characters X and Z to avoid your glazes turned to me. Don’t yell when you read my paper on how Our Daily Bread nearly left me blue and dead—this is real if you haven’t heard. The charts and stats shown at the end for the nerds. Characters and situations for the hims and hers; I’ve been molested at 8 and raped at 12 but still Z’s kidnapper went to jail. Before or after my mother? Before or after the sale? All things free from me. Come take all befell before my knees get weak and X snaps at the sail. Then we all go under, eternal nap. The big blink. Don’t think. Keep writing. Before she keeps on falling, you must end this scene. It would haunt me had she not found soft cushions or bedding, something to feel safe. Her friend Molly planned ahead. No need for stalling. Don’t ruin today with the mistake of performing a stake not yours. That's rather a heart warning. Engage with the daisies pushed on the landing—gas petal metal railing winding staircase soon it’ll be ending. Floating then indeed. All signals green! We made it rather safely.

The person who wrote that was a version of me who wrote that for a version of me that felt bad for versions of me, with so much love in their heart. They kept the tradition of writing because all versions of me worked hard to have that version of me be able to write that in a short sitting. Every single year of my life since preschool, I’ve been painting, drawing, and writing. I still do those things because it would be a disservice to myself to stop. All of my selves. The mes that are going to art from the heart, and the mes that arted and worked to get better at arting, for me to now art so freely. I art because I care for and love myself and everything I have and will create. I art to support myself. 

And I art as a reminder that art is a teacher and a helper for young people. A lot of young people make art and write and draw and want to be “something big” “in the art world”—which is just some made up category of modern society driven by egoic, Euro-descended bourgeois individuals who cannot handle thought, ironically—but these young people don’t understand that they are the art world already. And no one cares what they think if they don’t believe in what they think. And they don’t, they don’t believe what they think. So they look at you, whoever you are, to tell them what you think. Then they believe what you think, and what people who are paid to care about them want them to think, and regurgitate it poorly in the name of art. But that isn’t art, that’s industry. I will always feel a resistance to industry in my art and that is the single most act of revolutionary defiance I could ever perpetuate aside from simply existing as an Afro-Indigenous queer person. It’s to say fuck you “art world,” here is something that is existing without the desire to be seen, touched, and judged by you. It’s for my own personal gratification and development. Fuck you art world, fuck you capitalism. I make this art to be a better person. I make this art and it makes me a better friend, a better partner, a better sibling. I make this art and I learn I was wrong. I say sorry and mean it with changed behavior to match. I become more resilient and more confident in my ability to be a stronghold. I choose kinder words. I think about how I can help kids and impact the future through the love of people I exercise through art. I hope to teach people how to find and how to believe in what they think through their art because I did that shit first through mine.

Most of all, I love myself through my art.