For as long as I can remember, drawing has always been a way for to convey my imagination through an image that I can see right in front of me. One of my earliest and fondest memories is when I was a five-year old in pre-K: I would always wiggle in my seat and wait impatiently for the twenty-minute art time we would have in the morning right after we had a book read to us. The highlight of my day was being able to stick my hands in blue paint and create a cat on the massive paper in front of me. But what truly amazed me wasn’t the gooey feeling of the paint between my fingers or the amusement of being messy with my friends- it was the ability to create something that was in my mind and to put it on paper. If I wanted a house, I could paint it. If I wanted to create children, I could take a marker and draw. The concept of creating anything I wanted from a single thought in my head intrigued my younger self, and that fascination has stayed with me ever since.

As I grew older and entered into elementary school I started to see myself become more and more vested into my artistic side. I loved to draw characters from my favorite shows or pictures of my friends. I would hurry and finish my homework every night so that I could explore a world of my own creation. But one thing about growing up is that you begin to realize that the world is not always a place of joy and excitement. There are other emotions like sadness and loss that seem to wash more positive feelings completely away. I was in second grade when my grandmother died. But even though I was sad, it was at this age that I realized that other people feel sadness too. At a young age I developed the skill to understand what people were feeling. I desperately wanted to make my parents feel happy again so I drew them a picture because art had always made me happy. I remember drawing a picture of the three of us and our four cats. I still remember the first time I revealed it to my parents. The smiles I saw radiating from them made me know right then that this was something I always wanted to do. Art had a mysterious way of making myself and the people around me happy and I promised myself to always stick with it.

Now as a freshman in college I have continued my love for art by participating in campus art shows and drawing in my spare time. As a dancer for fourteen years I have come to love the movement of the human body and features of a face and the expression behind it. I treasure the moments when I can come home from school and show my parents a new piece I have been working on and to see them smile.