False Modesty ~ 7" x 9" oil on canvas panel
For sale on Daily Paintworks
Why am I an artist?
Hmmmm....
I remember sitting at the coffee table, at five or six years old. We had a brown shag rug that tickled my knees.
Someone had given me a sheet of tracing paper and it was a revelation.
I could draw something that looked like what it was supposed to! It wasn't childish circle faces and triangle trees. It was a dog, or a horse, or whatever it was...I don't even remember the subject, but it looked like what I'd meant it to look like!
My parents had beamed and exclaimed over how beautiful it was, always encouraging even my most childish scribbles.
As I sit writing this, my six year old daughter has just run up to me, beaming,
with her tracing of Draculaura. "Look how good I'm doing, Mom!" she trills.
"Wow! That's awesome!" I say.
It doesn't matter that it's traced, it matters that it looks right to her. That day on the brown shag rug, I suddenly had confidence that maybe my little hand holding a pencil, could make something look right, how it was "supposed" to look. And I know that is what my daughter is feeling right now.
That day I decided I would be an artist. I didn't stop drawing. I drew everything I could and soon I didn't need to trace. I could make it "look right" all on my own.
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