There are a million different definitions and ideas of what an artist is, or should be. I have often tried to define what an artist really is and I've usually come up short. The generic definition is someone who is skilled enough to produce something aesthetically pleasing, but to create art takes more than just skill.
Poetic and more romanticized definitions call artists seers, or people with the ability to see what others cannot. However, I believe the title "artist" is so much more than that. Art, especially performative art like dance or music, is the most pure form of expression. When done correctly, art transcends words and logic and intimately speaks to the soul. It has the ability to show a different aspect of humanity.
The first time I "encountered" art, I was being wheeled to my hospital room for the night. My eyes had been tightly closed shut, desperately trying to concentrate on something other than pain. But when I reluctantly opened my eyes, I immediately caught sight of a Picasso print. I watched the colors and the entire painting come to life in front of my eyes; they moved me and stirred in me a hunger to create. I filled my bedridden days with colors, sketches and paintings, creating a world where my mind could run freely. Slowly, art became my haven.
As a child, I frequented museums to marvel at the works of Van Gogh, Modigliani, and Picasso, but I usually ended up marveling at the reactions these paintings caused in others. Some spectators would furrow their brows in contemplation and others would drift inside the world before their eyes. Watching these reactions, I secretly vowed that someday I would become an artist.
I hopelessly yearned to be an artist, so I tried out many artistic costumes—painter, musician, dancer— but none felt natural. No matter how many paintings I made, poems I wrote, or songs I sung, I never felt close to my goal. Was I wasting my time? What if nothing ever came of this? I equated artists with prophets; they had been called to serve as seers of the world, reflecting humanity and its flaws.
Years passed and I still waited to be called. Leaving me frustrated and insecure, I did the only thing I knew how to do—I wrote. I filled pages with frustrated poems and even more with words sewed together by the lines I drew through them. Constantly fighting with myself and falling into a temporary lapse of judgement, I turned my back from my haven. Yet, the desire to create was still there.
Although I am still pursuing that dream, I will never see myself an artist because I believe that is an ever-evolving process of becoming. The word "artist" is something that one grows into and whose definition is always being redefined.
