No, I did not become the great artist I set out to be. Or the illustrator, or the designer, or the decorator, or the writer, or even the concert pianist. I had the chopsticks. Back when I was starting out, an older artist marveled at how I had already found my own style. She said most artists spend their whole lives searching for it. I was 12. But after a starry five year run illustrating for an international greeting card company, I did the worst thing an artist can do. I stopped.
To be fair to myself, it had to do with survival. There's a reason why we're called poor and starving. When not being ripped off, artists have been held to the lowest wages of all workers, women artists get paid less than men, we work without safety nets of any kind and... have you ever tried surviving on $3000 a year? It's enough to make anybody quit.
Then there are the social landmines. All our lives, from every direction, we are bombarded by pressure to fit in. True creatives can't do that. It is within our very cells to want to think for ourselves, ask questions and respond creatively to challenges - all extraordinary gifts to be sure - but don't do it or you'll do it alone... probably wearing a beret.
It doesn't help that others think of what we do as playing, not working. "Oh, you're an artist! Lucky you!" Let me assure you, while creating art can be joyous, it is also dull, tedious, stressful and physically and emotionally demanding. But it gets worse. For years, psychologists have studied the links between creativity and HSP, depression and madness. Try surviving any of that.
As a kid I used to lose myself in drawing to escape my pain, over time it became my pain. So why would I want to go back? Because, of all the misguided things I did with my life, nothing was more deeply regretted than throwing away my talent. We don't do art because it's fun, we do it because we are driven, we are compelled. We do art because we can't not do it. When we stop, we go against nature and all creation.
So I want to go back. The good news is that creativity is never lost. It incubates. It deepens. And one day, if you let it, it reemerges stronger than ever. "Renaissance" means "rebirth" in French. After forty years of stumbling through The Dark Ages, I am entering my Rennaissance. With a name like Renn, how can I not?
To be fair to myself, it had to do with survival. There's a reason why we're called poor and starving. When not being ripped off, artists have been held to the lowest wages of all workers, women artists get paid less than men, we work without safety nets of any kind and... have you ever tried surviving on $3000 a year? It's enough to make anybody quit.
Then there are the social landmines. All our lives, from every direction, we are bombarded by pressure to fit in. True creatives can't do that. It is within our very cells to want to think for ourselves, ask questions and respond creatively to challenges - all extraordinary gifts to be sure - but don't do it or you'll do it alone... probably wearing a beret.
It doesn't help that others think of what we do as playing, not working. "Oh, you're an artist! Lucky you!" Let me assure you, while creating art can be joyous, it is also dull, tedious, stressful and physically and emotionally demanding. But it gets worse. For years, psychologists have studied the links between creativity and HSP, depression and madness. Try surviving any of that.
As a kid I used to lose myself in drawing to escape my pain, over time it became my pain. So why would I want to go back? Because, of all the misguided things I did with my life, nothing was more deeply regretted than throwing away my talent. We don't do art because it's fun, we do it because we are driven, we are compelled. We do art because we can't not do it. When we stop, we go against nature and all creation.
So I want to go back. The good news is that creativity is never lost. It incubates. It deepens. And one day, if you let it, it reemerges stronger than ever. "Renaissance" means "rebirth" in French. After forty years of stumbling through The Dark Ages, I am entering my Rennaissance. With a name like Renn, how can I not?