The Artist

I am nervous to introduce you to someone. She is a timid creature with wide eyes and a fragile soul. She is an artist and she resides within me. I barely bring her out. She is scared.

I am going to attempt to be brave. I am going to expose her. She, is me. I am an artist.

That is a hard word to claim: Artist. When I think of artists, I think of people who have worked their whole lives to obtain the title; the people who are scattered throughout my Art History text books like Van Gogh, Warhol, and Cassatt. Yet, what about those people who simply see the world through a different lens? Those rare souls who try to capture every remarkable thing that they see with a camera, a paintbrush, a crayon, a pencil, a piano, a violin, a clarinet, a written or spoken word? These are artists, whether recognized or not.

Artist is a word that has to be claimed if you are to believe it of yourself. I guess that's what is hard. You have to believe in yourself. The Impressionists were laughed at when they introduced the style. Duchamp received criticism for Fountain, a urinal displayed as an art exhibit. People naively remark that they themselves could easily recreate works of modern art or say that their 2 year old could have done something similar. In college, I learned about countless artists who barely made a living during their lifetime. I wondered what they thought of themselves. Did they claim the word artist or did they hide that aspect of their life fearing that they would be seen as a failure? I would like to think that the artist was so much a part of them, that they never questioned themselves. They just were. They were the artist, whether or not someone else dubbed them so.

The small creature inside of me, who blushes at the word, is an artist. She is dying to come out. She wants to play with paint, arrange words, and tell stories. She wants to sing and dance. While she hopes no one will see her, I fear it's inevitable. She must be exposed. She, is me. I am an artist.