Artist Statement

Emily McMinn Ms. Bibbs Writing 1, MCA 11/28/11 I have no particular process when it comes to my art. I believe it could be “phantom drawing.” I draw just as I write. My hand controls it. My mind has very little to do with it. My writing and drawing are quite similar. If one sees me writing, usually my pencil is flying across the paper, and words are on the paper where my pencil was. With my drawing, I take it slower, but it is quite fast compared to most. As some things take days or weeks for an artist to accomplish, I am able to accomplish it without a sweat. However, if I lift my hand up for more than a moment, I get writer’s block, or sketcher’s block, and have to think and visualize before I start again. Getting started is my main problem, but after I let my idea free, it takes on a life of its own. At times, I can be haunted by my own inspiration. As I picture different forms in my mind, I am afraid they will die if I do not bring them to life on paper. Each drawing ends up holding symbolism in it, whether I mean it to or not. As I have said before, my mind has little to do with it. I do not sit there and contemplate how an image can symbolize a certain idea. I start off with a vision, but it is a blur, and after I draw it, I realize it holds a lot of symbolism. For example, I began drawing people holding masks, and I did not add faces to the people. That symbolized that if a person pretends to be something they are not by masking their true personality, when they try to remove their facade and be themselves, they cannot. They lose themselves, so there is absolutely nothing there, only a mask to hide the shame of having no personality. Art is a way to say things when you have no words. Art has saved my life because it lets me express myself in a way which does not require the use of my weak vocabulary. Sometimes I just cannot express my feelings and emotions through words, but I can vividly picture them in my mind, so I draw or paint. I strive to find ways to put my thoughts and emotions into words, but words escape me, while images can plainly state anything I wish to get across to the public. I have been drawing since I first learned to hold a pencil in my small hand. My mother and father can both draw well, so one could say my talents were inherited. In kinder garden, my class had to draw self-portraits, and mine was the only one that looked anything like a human being. As my interest in drawing grew, so did my skills. In middle school, I was the reason the school decided to get an art program, and all students were required to participate. Although there were no competitions, I enjoyed every moment of it, and I learned to love art more than ever. In high school, I learned to paint as well as draw. We were allowed creative freedom, and that is probably the reason I became an “artist.” To be honest, I believe everyone is an artist in some way. Everything is an art form, one way or another. Sports are art, even though I do not like that type of art. Chemistry is art because it has to do with beautiful chemical reactions, which include light or color. Why everyone does not write an artist statement, I will never know. It is my strongest belief that art lives in everything we do. For me to call myself an artist, I have to understand this fact. Art is in the air we breathe, in every sound we hear, in every color we gaze upon. Art is life, and because of that, I am an artist. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art is beauty, and I see art and beauty everywhere I go. Art is everywhere. One only has to harness it to become an “artist.”