art

Art has never been a big part of my life, in fact, I only discovered I had some sort of talent for it two years ago. All through school, my teachers had been correcting me and saying I was drawing something the wrong way, or painting with the wrong colour. Thinking back now, I was good at art back then, and it's quite sad that they didn't see it.

There was a girl in my class who was known as 'the artist' so the teacher would always pay more attention to her than everyone else, so I hid my work a lot and tried not to let the teacher see it, because she never said it was good at all, only complained about the things that I'd done wrong. 

The year after that, I had a new teacher, but I'd become very hidden with my work by then. I'd never let the teacher see my work. I never really spoke to anyone in art that year. I just didn't feel comfortable being there. I felt like I was being controlled- we were all given the exact same tasks so we had to create work which felt like a replica of every other person's in the room. There was no freedom of expression that year.

At the end of that year, I had to decide which GCSEs I wanted to take (for those of you who don't know what a GCSE is, it's basically the qualification you get at the end of high school in the UK, and it is done over two years). I decided which subjects I wanted to take, and then just added art on at the end. I didn't really want to do it, but I didn't want to do anything else. 

During my GCSE art, I had a new teacher. He was much more down to earth than any other teacher I'd ever had. He recognised my talent for drawing and would encourage me to try new and creative techniques- often laughing at me as I failed in the process. He never laughed in a harsh way, but in a way that made sense.

I was one of the few people in the class who was willing to try new things, and I think he really liked that. I think he also liked my hard working attitude. I'd often sit on my own listening to music for the whole lesson and just getting so much work done, while the rest of the class were distracted and talking. He also really respected my need for space when I was working. He would often walk past my work, look at what I was doing and walk away without saying a thing. He knew that if I needed advice that I would go to him myself. 

Every other person in my year who did art hated him, but I really liked him. Once a year we had to talk to all of our teachers, just so they could tell us how we were doing and I remember speaking to him very vividly. He briefly spoke about my work but spent most of the time asking how I was getting on. He said he recognised himself in me- a very individual person who tended to avoid mixing with people. I think the fact that we could relate to each other made me trust him even more. He was definitely my favourite art teacher I'd ever had. 

When I was getting really bad with my depression, he wouldn't stop me from creating depressing work, well, once he said that my piece would be taking it too far which at the time annoyed me, but thinking back now, I agree. I think he realised that I needed art to express myself, because I was bad at expressing things every other way.

Learning to express my emotions through art is very hard. I've had to conform to a teacher's wishes for so long that I never truly learned to listen to myself, and I'm still learning. But my work contains so many emotions, when I choose to put them in. 

I have two styles of art- art which is obvious and contains no emotion. It is simply me putting an image onto paper and making it as perfect as possible. This is what I have to do most of the time, so I can get a good grade at college. Then, theres my emotional art. I find this so much more difficult because instead of drawing something that really exists, I draw what I see in my mind, or something to express how I feel. It's quite difficult to explain, but if you saw the difference between my art for college, and my emotional art, you'd understand.

My emotional art is always very interesting. It tends to be messy and it's not always clear what it is, but it always contains emotions, thoughts and feelings, sometimes ones I didn't even know I was feeling. I sometimes show one of my friends my emotional art, and he is very good at trying to figure out what it means, because I often find it difficult to understand my work. He isn't always right, but he is usually quite close. He looks into what I've subconsciously done and tries to understand that, which I don't do, so it's nice to have someone helping me to understand what I have created. 

I don't show many people my emotional art because it feels like I'm exposing parts of myself that I don't understand, and I just don't want people to make a judgement based on what they see in my art.

Art is something that I love doing, because it challenges me and allows me to focus on just one thing and block out the rest of the world for a little while.