We shouldn’t leave the arts only to prodigies.
I have been around art my whole life. My mom taught choir and my dad moved from painting to furniture making.
If I were in a fire, the one thing I would save would be my collection of journals from the past decade.
Even though I’ve written countless pieces for class and this newspaper, it’s the things in those journals that nobody reads that may be the most important to me.
I don’t know how I’d process or express anything without writing it down. Too many times I’ve encouraged people to write in similar ways, or find an outlet of their own, and they reject the idea because they’re “not good” at it.
This fear of making art incorrectly, something I’m not sure is possible, holds people back. Never starting guarantees never improving.
When you write a poem or draw a picture for yourself, you are proving that your time and effort do not always need to be spent on activities that make money for a boss or impress a professor. You can create things for yourself, for loved ones or for the simple joy of it.
I find it too easy to fall into a cycle where I’m too tired outside of work and school to be active with my time. We become passive consumers every hour we aren’t productive for someone else.
Art does not only exist for those who can profit off of it. Our time is actually worth more than just money.
My dad was able to make some money through art before a hand injury got in his way.
While I can think of one restaurant in my hometown that may still have “The Frankie” written at the bottom of one of its paintings, that’s not where the value lies.
My dad’s art lives now in the furniture he’s allowed me to keep in my apartment, the paintings I hang on my own walls and the hours he spent trying to teach me how to properly shade.
Even after years of parenting, working and fighting battles with his health, I see familiar life in my dad whenever we discuss art.
It’s not in a studio with expensive watercolors, sometimes it was in the computer room with printer paper and a pen. It’s not profitable, but I know it’s valuable to us.
In 2024, your goals do not need to be full of side hustles, grade point averages and graduate programs. You can take a stand against the ideology that you are only able to make deliverables in corporate settings by creating for yourself and those around you. You’ll probably progress and gain skills along the way, but you’ll first see the progress in your own mental clarity.