Creator

I am an artist.
I don’t claim to be good, only that I am one. I believe I would fit into someone’s category of a creative person. I don’t deny it. There is a creative surge that works me over almost every day. I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what it means to be bored. I’m never bored. Trapped in a shopping mall, waiting for my family is never as tedious as it may be for some; my mind is constantly swarmed with ideas that I revel in thinking through. My fingers unconsciously trace the outlines of people as they pass by; my thoughts formulate a story.
Sitting if front of the TV isn’t even as much of a distraction as it could be. As any show shuffles along, I’m on a constant vigil to examine a scene, either to imagine how I would paint it, or how the cameraman shot it, or how any given effect was achieved, or how I would write that particular piece of dialogue, and on and on.

I am an artist. And yet, my day gets swallowed up so quickly with “distractions” from the actuality of art. It’s nobodies fault, it’s just the way it is. For me, the actuality of art is that “Zen” experience that occurs during the manifestation of whatever you’re trying to create. There is no time in those places. Hours can go by unnoticed as I’m spreading paint around a canvas, or expressing my inner clamorings through the written word, or even inking a cartoon. I am lost to the “outer” world in those moments; I am submerged in what I create, with a singular desire to expose the vision that lurks inside me. Everything about my desire to create is wrapped around that experience.

And still, days fold into days and that urge is not fulfilled. There are always the mean necessities of real life that form a gauntlet that separates an artist from his art. I suppose that’s why the Bohemian sirens have always been influential with artists. Abandon all forms of responsibility and free yourself to follow your creative urge unfettered. Yet, even doing that, hunger has way of demanding our attention, and rubbing our noses in the necessities of life on a fallen planet. It’s as though there is some law at work, much like gravity or thermodynamics; a creator is separated from his creation the majority of the time.

As I paint a painting, or draw a comic strip, I have found that age has blurred my vision, and made my fingers tender. I have to stop more frequently than I used to, in order to shake out my joints and rub my aching eyes. I often will wander to the kitchen and interact with my family, but I can only do this for a short time because the ache to return to my creation is palpable.

I am an artist. I become one with my creations, yet I constantly feel a separation from them which fills me with some strange, ineffable longing. I long to have that time to manifest something of myself through something I create. This brings a joy that is not expressed through words.

I am made in the image of God.