I sit at my art studio, lighted only by my small antique 40 watt lamp, and feel disheartened and tired. As I layer colors on a large sketch all I see are the mistakes I made, the faults, the blemishes. The drawing seems bland and talentless, and I am bored with it. Is it just simple artist self doubts, I wonder. Or is there really something lacking?
…Flash back a few days. The artist friend is over helping me frame one of my drawings for serious coffee. I knew when I had done that piece that is was simple, and not one of my best, but I feel a renewed disappointment in it when I view it framed. I feel as if I am using my mixed media to hide my real lack of talent – to make something that is otherwise mundane and childish stand out as interesting and sellable. The artist friend likes that piece, admires how I did the hearts and added the mixed media, so perhaps it is just my to personal eye that views my work in the light of imperfection.
…Flashfoward again to that evening. I sit at my studio, disheartened with my own lack of talent. I draw, layering color over color in boredom. I do not create this evening, what I do, is finish. The piece I work on does not excite me or really interest me at all. It feels simple, plain, and I feel it does not showcase my real ability to draw, it just showcases my ability to hide 
plainness with colorful beads. I still have in my portfolio the 8×10 pieces I did as a teenager and how intricate and detailed and unique each one was. The pieces I have done lately, to me, feel contrived and stale.
I finally take a break from my layering. I pull back the curtain covering my glass screen door and look out at the city lights shining in the night darkness. I stare out at the city and wonder, where did the joy of my art go? The fun and playfulness? Was it buried under incoming bills, or is there something more wrong? I glance down again at the large piece I have been working on, and feel an unnameable feeling of disappointment? Disheartening? Just a inner sense that something is wrong. The drawing does not speak to me, does not fill me with any emotion. It is a few interesting shapes that will be filled in with sand beads. This is not the type of art I want to do. I stand up to get some distance and go the short distance into the kitchen where I put on water for coffee.
As I let the water boil I glanced down at the round coffee stains on my counter. Dark and spreading out in different designs, like someone had placed them there on purpose. I can still see as an artist, I think, so why can I no longer create as one? And perhaps that is the problem, I realize, the fact that I have not actually created in over a month. All I have done is drawn shapes and filled in color. That type of art does not fill me with any sense of creative fulfillment, so I feel empty.
The water boils and I make instant Maxwell, stirring a heaping teaspoon into my cup. I think of what the best friend would say to me, “NO COFFEE FOR YOU!” and it makes me smile. He would also ask, “Have you arted today?” And that is the question I think, as I sit down back down at my studio, have I done art today? I have colored, filled in images, and been bored and distant. Setting my coffee carefully on the side of my studio, I reach down and pick up a small 11X14 sketch that I finished earlier. As I check to see if the mixed media is dry I am struck by the beauty in this drawing. I am not looking at a stale color-in-the-shapes-drawing, but a living art piece that is full of the interest and emotion I felt when I created it, one where the mixed media is so subtle it is almost unn
oticeable, just enough to give it a slight sparkle when the light hits it. This Drawing is one I wold admit with pride that I drew. I switch my gaze to the unemotional larger piece, a pretty picture with no heart. I stare thoughtfully at it for a moment, slowly realizing that that is is not the type of art I want to build my career off of. So I move the large sketchbook the floor and find my smaller 11×14 one. I open it to a blank page and try to draw the way I used to, just sitting down and creating, going with whatever colors and images wanted to come out. I am slow at first, like the ability to actually create has become rusty with disuse. I start one sketch, lose interest, start another, and another….and when I am about to give up, finally make a pencil mark that captures my interest and then I am drawing, creating. I lean over my work, people passing outside talking, cars going by on Douglas, a homeless mans cart wheels squeaking, and I notice none of it as I lose myself in the drawing, the lines, the colors, the shapes, the minut details of the small petals circling the heart. This, I think, This is me, this is where my talent lies, in small sketches, where the intricate details are the focus and the mixed media adding to the drawing instead of being the drawing. As I draw, as I Create, I already know I won’t finish those last two large sketches. They will be put aside, probably to never be finished or even looked at again. I know how much more I can sell the large prints for, but I am still a naive enough artist to believe in artist integrity. I do not want to force myself to put out prints I do not believe in just to take people’s money. My heavy heart lightens as I sit in my lamp lite apartment and once again, Create.
