Lotus; wash over line.

I want to talk about art and about being who you are and about bullies. Honest, they really do all intersect.

When I was little, I drew pictures. And people ooh'd and aah'd and told me they were good, but I saw all the flaws in them, the places they just weren't quite right. So I practiced and I worked at it and I continued to see the flaws and messed up bits. I saw how the circle wasn't really round and how that didn't really look like that and how utterly horribly rotten I really was at art.

I looked at Degas and at Leonardo, at Rembrandt and Picasso, and I knew, just knew I'd never be that good. 

I took a two day oil painting seminar in high school. They said I was really good. I painted a few pictures, and again, I saw the flaws. 

In high school, I didn't take art classes, because I wasn't good enough for that. I didn't show anyone my pictures or tell anyone I could draw because it wasn't enough, it wasn't good enough, I wasn't big enough or shiny enough or cool enough to be an artist. Artists are people who wear cool clothes they drew on and they smoke cigarettes and carry pencils and sketch pads everywhere and they don't care what everyone around them thinks.

I cared. Oh, I cared. I cared that they called me Caspar because I was pale. I cared that they told me I stank, and that I was ugly; when they said I couldn't I believed them, and when they told me I should die I tried.

My mom told me I laughed too loud; my aunt told me to question everything because it was important to make up my own mind about things. I became uncertain. I knew the words the kids used about me were wrong, but what if they had a grain of truth in them? I had to question both the rightness and the wrongness of what they said about me.

I saw the flaws in myself, pointed out by my "peers." I wanted to be quirky and cool, suave and sexy and awesome, but I could see the places where I wasn't quite round enough, or sleek enough, the places where the lacquer had worn through and the spots where the underpainting was the wrong tone.

I didn't even consider a University with a fine arts program. Hard science all the way.

Every time I moved, my art supplies came with me, in boxes labeled 'crafts.' When I told people I could draw, it was in a downplayed, simplified version of 'drawing.' I can make circles and three dimensional boxes. 

In my heart of hearts, I was an artist. I painted the world in new ways, showing people what is really there, and opened up eyes and minds and hearts to emotional experiences... I captured the world and made it mine through paper and pigment; I created things that were brand new, never-before-seen marvels of the imagination. 

And I hid it all away, because it was too flawed. 

Each time I told someone what I did, who I was, it hurt more. More and more to not say 'Artist.' 'Creator of beauty.' 'Person who tames the world and shows it to you, new.' Part of me screamed through the rest of me to make art again. 

I'd do it, for a while, until life got in the way (that's what I told myself.) I'd do it until I was overwhelmed by the flaws in myself and had to put it away again. 

Now, I changed my life to have more room for art. This thing that has been at the center of my soul for as long as I can remember must be at the center of my life, too. Flawed, broken, not as good as Degas or Michaelangelo and wonderful. 

I am an artist. I see the world and interpret it through pigment, paper, wire, glue and clay; I present it to you, my audience. This art is me, do you see it? React to this thing that I made so I know that I exist. Show me the impact I have had so that I may know I live. 

Art is life, I am art. I show it to you as I show you my own beating heart. See its flaws? Do you love them, too? The places where I can see that this time I made it better than the last, and the places I have still to work on... aren't they lovely? 

I no longer define myself in the negative. "I'm not Christian, not straight, not monogamous, not normal, not boring, not not not not..." No. I am an artist. I am queer. I am Zen. I am ART. 

Tho I will still question, quest after greater skill and technique, I will no longer listen to the voices from my youth, the ugly evil ones that tell me lies about myself. I know who I am now and the words of others cannot change that.

I am an artist. I will make the world and show it to you; I will look at the world you have made. As you see me, I see you. We exist, together. Let's make art and prove it.