There was no bigger dream I had as a child than becoming an artist. This dream started when I was six and I have continued it into an almost full blown reality almost a quarter of a century later. But with something that I once loved soon became tedious. Then became monotonous. Now I just wish it to be over.
I am not a quitter, nor have I ever been. I pride myself on being able to follow through on my ambitions, but this has turned into a death march. I can no longer allow myself to do this. It is with great pain that tomorrow I will begin packing all of my art supplies up with no intention of when or if I am ever going to unpack them. People that know me say I have said this before, but things are different now. I have found a new muse. Which is why I haven't been able to kick the habit before. Art was always my escape. although now looking back on it, it seems more like a prison cell.
Art has kept me at a level in life below satisfactory. I always thought this was okay because I always thought an artist was supposed to suffer. It gave a sort of nobility to my poorness. Which not many careers do.
I never really understood why I did art. I just did it to get the ideas in to reality and it turns out I was good at it. But, being good isn't good enough. Being ambitious isn't good enough. Exhausting every last resource and fund isn't good enough. I took a crap shoot and lost. I figured if I used every waking moment of my life to further myself as an artist since pretty much birth that would have some worth in my success as an artist. However, I have come to find out the hard way that doesn't matter.
In my lack of success in art I have no one to blame,but myself which is the hardest part of this majorly unacceptable failure. It is something that I have done wrong. The only problem is I don't know what. I am no longer willing to just slave away on products that go nowhere. It is too creatively exhausting.
I weigh this decision heavily because I know the state of my mental health is not going to fair so well. Hopefully writing will fill the void.
This is definitely one of the most painful decisions I have had to make, but I cannot watch as my art dies a slow horrible death with zero audience and it's screams of beauty falling on ignorantly deaf ears. I wanted to be an artist to show the world some grandiose idea that things are beautiful blah, blah, blah... That was many a year ago, probably more than a decade or so. This last ten years it has been a war. The War of ART.
I have been forcibly trying to get my art out. Anywhere. Everywhere. North. South. East coast. And I have lost on every front. Every battle was a notorious defeat. I always tried to pull some positive out of it. I cannot do it any more. I don't want to talk about art. I don't want to see it. I just don't care anymore.
I used to say I was married to my art. I guess it's time for divorce court. Good ridden, farewell. I am sad to see a part of me go. A big part of me, but all the same my art had almost become cancerous.
I can't blame everything on art, but you know what I am going to. After investing so much for so many years I definitely feel burned. The career I chose and strive to succeed simply didn't have that same plan in mind for me. All the time, all the money. Now is that exact moment where I either cut off the losses or go down with the ship and I have been going down ever since the ship set sail.
I can't say what is in store for the future of my art career if there is one, but what I can say is for now I am done. I will keep one sketch book in which I will write all my ideas of art in just in case I do decide to pursue it again.
Just like I predicted one main reason I did not want to come back to Ohio was because I feared there might be catastrophic repercussions. Which is what precisely happened. Creative people as well as famous people go to Ohio to be forgotten. Thus, my art is forgotten. It does bring my career full circle though. I was born an artist in Ohio and now I get to watch my art die in Ohio.
After twenty four years of building my body as a vessel for creative energy that flowed into my work. Within a dismal two years of living in Ohio my love and aspirations in the field of visual arts has successfully and systematically been extinguished. I am no longer the person I once was. Something has changed. I have changed. There is no rebirth. Only regret that I may have wasted the last ten years of my life in pursuit of the unobtainable, at least for me.
The one thing that may have led to my demise, might be the one thing I had no control over. Luck. I tried to make my own, but for being born on friday the 13th maybe it just wasn't in the cards for me.
One redeeming aspect of this whole ordeal is that at least I never ever really, truly succeeded. This would be even harder to deal with if I had to deal with my short comings of success. I did on the other hand remain a consistently unsuccessful and an utter failure. This I can be proud of. There is something to be said about consistency.
So now what?
I don't know.
I have just thrown out the window all that I know and all that I am.
So, now... What am I? Or rather what do I want to be is the question.
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