I have been an artist since I was old enough to pick up a stick and carve in the dirt. From there I took an even more active interest in art, and with my family’s support (and access to a small studio where I was allowed to paint a few times a week,) I finished my first framed oil on canvas at the age of 6.
Artist tools at an early age: any stick and a patch of dirt will do.
Now, I would never say I was a prodigy. I simply had an unquenchable desire to create beauty wherever and whenever, and it was sometimes nothing more than taking a crude watercolor brush to butcher paper or weaving a daisy chain while sitting in a field. The fact remained that there was a creative flow within me that never ebbed.
To state that I was most happy when I was creating art is a fact and probably true with most artists. But within that fickle activity called life, circumstances, sometimes out of need or ignorance, can take one down a path into the mundane and complacent. And if anybody ever wanted to know how to extinguish artistic urge, it’s to submerge it in the day-to-day humdrum routine of the ordinary. Surefire killer.
The best thing you can do for artists is simply let them do art.
That being said, it is of the utmost importance that an artist keep his head above water—vital, actually. The reality is that artists have a gigantic hand in injecting the beauty and vitality we all enjoy in present day life. I wrote an article about this very subject: the role of the artist in society and how their creative impact is broad and deep.
Without the beauty continually brought into being by the many players in the various genres of art, this world would be a dull, soulless place. My personal role and responsibility as an artist is to not only create beautiful work that uplifts others, but to actively support my fellow artists. Art is my job, my life and my love, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
~Ana
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