My Journey To Becoming An Artist
The Beginning
As a child I grew up in a poor household as many of us did in Cleveland, Ohio. I lived in a small duplex with my mother and father at the time. My mother worked in a drug store while my father was in and out of jobs as he struggled with addiction. At the time I was not any older than 6 years old, the age in which my parents finally decided to split. I remember some horrible memories as a child dealing with my mothers abuse by my father and going hungry at night, a story for another time. But as I paint this picture for you (see what I did there?) I did have some good memories and one of those was my fathers artistry inspiring me as a child to pick up a pencil and start drawing like my life depended on it.
So yes, I did come from a family of artists. My mother was mostly the bread winner at the time. She did her best getting to and from work while my father would be at home with us or working at the west side market. When he was home I remember him sitting at his desk drawing some bizarre, macabre drawings of hooks in hearts and demons . Now I see that for my father, art was a way of expression and coping with his so-called demons was by putting them on paper.
Even though things were not ideal at home, I did love my dad as most children love their parents unconditionally, and I looked up to him. My earliest memories are sitting next to him while he drew, I would draw but one false line that I didn't like, I'd start all over going through hundreds of pieces of papers in a setting while he took his good old time.
I even remember him selling a drawing to a friend once to make ends meet for us to have food on the table. That was my first ah-ha moment where I figured out that art could be a way of life and not just something you did for fun.
The Middle
Fast forward some years, I'm a teenager now. Okay, I was kind of your typical teenager. I was rebellious, I experimented with drugs, I had sex and I fell in love. I think the worst of it all was falling in love, or what I believed to be love at the time. I won't use actual names here but we will call him Mark and he was my first true love. We met in high school and he just had a different look about him and I was pretty up front and kind of full of myself so I took one look at him and said to myself "he's mine". He attracted a lot of the "alternative girls" but I somehow burst through that crowd, got his attention and we became a couple. He was my high school sweet heart. It was a pretty tumultuous relationship, I could write for days about it, but what he did instill in me was my art and my love of it.
He was a line-draw artist that drew simple yet provocative works on paper, often small. I would always ask him what his inspiration was and he would say "If you don't know, I have failed as an artist". He really inspired me. I tried to draw but I wasn't good at making images up as he was. I needed a reference and I also need a reason. That reason slowly began to turn into heartbreak so I turned to the paintbrush.
After we broke up I started to draw girls with fine line sharpie very similar to Marks style. I wanted to differentiate to I started to use very early (and slow) internet searches for Inspiration.
That is when I saw Deanne Cheuk's work and how she incorporated the use of collage and, you guessed it, watercolor!
When I first tried watercolors and ink I just used watercolor as a background filler to create galaxies and designs. I just loved the look and how the paint would drip and create organic shapes and colors as they bled together. Watercolor was something that you could not really control and I liked that.
Slowly my love for watercolor blossomed and it became a full time medium for me as I began to use it consistently in all of my work.
The Now
I wouldn't quite say that this is the end of the line for me. I've tried art school and oil paints. I've tried acrylics and it just doesn't inspire me the way watercolors do for me. I feel that artists choose their mediums based on their personalities, and I'm not quite sure what that says about me, you be the judge.
So here I am, years later in my late 20's and I get to teach art for a living outside of the public school system. I currently work for the City of Cleveland Art Department teaching art full time to children, adults and senior citizens. I get to create my own curriculum and I don't grade their work (which was a huge part on why I did not get my teaching licence to be an art teacher).
I base a lot of my success from hard work and pushing through shitty jobs and working hard in school to get where I am. I also chalk it up to dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time. There is so much more to the story but these are some bullet points of my life in the grand scheme of things.
The moral of the story is that art is hard. It takes time, dedication and inspiration. Most people believe that art is like some cosmic gift that was given to you, something that you were born with. For me, I think we are all born artists. As children we have these vivid imaginations and as life progresses we are bogged down by every day responsibilities and our imaginations begin to fade away.
I believe that artists hold on to that thread of imagination and bring it out of themselves for others to see, think and feel.
Samantha