My First Art Exhibition

It is a milestone for an artist, definitely. It wasn’t anything too big but there were a bunch of people walking around and I overheard someone saying my name and talking about the use of lines in my “Still life with Kettle” and that felt very surreal. They had pretty good cake there and I felt stupid paying £1.50 with card for a piece because I didn’t bring any cash. Mmm, cake. I didn’t have any sugar for months and last week I thought I’d have a little bit and I’ve just been eating cake for dinner ever since. I’ll go back to normal soon, I promise.

Anyway, keeping an distanced emotional connection with your art is extremely difficult. At this point, art is 90% of my life. Not just the painting – art friends, art movies, art youtubers, browsing old paintings as a hobby, etc. If either of my grandmas calls me, the first question is always about how my art is going. There’s just no getting away from it even if I wanted to. There are other hobbies in my life but I don’t think about them. I’ll be running at the gym thinking about painting and I’ll be cooking a gourmet dinner imagining my recent piece in my head and trying to point out the mistakes. It’s kinda tiring. I have to force myself to take breaks. When I was a writer it was not the same and I believe that proves my love for writing wasn’t equal to my love for painting. I remember having to force myself to finish the last few chapters of my book but I never have to force myself to grab a paintbrush.

I believe I was the youngest artist at the exhibition. Most of the people were senior citizens, with skills that they’ve worked on for their entire lives. I’ve only started getting into this when corona locked me in my room with nothing else to do. My things were hanging next to ones that took 50 years of practice to come into existence. But, the audience doesn’t know that. They look at mine and they look at the one next to it and they don’t know how hard I had to work to condense years of work into the little time that I’ve spent in this sphere. That is a little soul-crushing but it is also why I really love it. It won’t matter what age you are, gender, anything. It’s all about the final product. You can’t cheat your way into it. You can’t have someone else do it for you. There’s no quick way to get there and there’s no easy way. And that’s why I chose to spend my life on it.