While attending elementary school, I was known by my classmates and teachers as a "talented kid". I possessed what folks seemed to think was the magical ability to draw. Although I was never smart enough to monetize that skill at an early age, I did have a special social status. But that began to change when Jesse Ashe came to school.
Jesse was also pretty good at drawing. Classmates who once admired me were suddenly admiring Jesse and comparing our work against one another. This never turned into a feud between me and Jesse, but it certainly shook up my understanding of the world.
I went from being the talented kid to being a talented kid, and with that change came the realization that my talent could be of lesser quality than Jesse's talent. I think that might be one of the first occasions in which I experienced fear in relation to art.
Although I've discarded unhealthy notions of "talent" in exchange for the healthier idea of "skill", I still struggle with fear. It wells up within me before I share new work with people, share my work with someone I've never met, etc. The voice of fear is usually saying something like, "You'll never be good enough," or "They don't actually like that painting... they pity you," or "You'll never be as skilled as X artist," etc. This fear, and its deceitful words, even come up in the midst of the process of painting. That moment, in the midst of painting, is the hardest to address.
With the rise of fear is the choice to do battle and persevere, or to give up and quit. Sometimes I will take a break in order for me to be able to persevere. Other times I'm able to keep painting and work through those thoughts, coming out the other end of battle stronger than before. Regardless, it is always one ultimate thing that keeps me going: the beautiful.
By "the beautiful" I mean those transcendent experiences and perceptions of reality which often occur in the midst of hardship, grief, suffering, and pain. It is within these caverns that we can catch a glimpse of "God's backside".
This theme can be found in many icons. In the crucifixion, for example, our hearts at once bleed with Mary's heart and yet we rejoice to drink from that fount of suffering in the Eucharist.
We can also perceive this in our own lives. A loved one who suffers and dies a pious death is a strangely beautiful thing. We grieve, of course, and yet at the same time witness the end--the telos--of all created things. God is there with us.
The last memory of my grandmother was seeing her connected to a ventilator, and all sort of other medical equipment I don't understand, as she slowly suffered and died from lymph node cancer.
I was in middle school at the time, and it was the most profound experience of death I had ever had. Being young, and expecting that she would be okay, my last words to her were something really dumb about the basketball game I played that day. I regretted that for a long time, wishing I had been more aware of what was going on, and perhaps then I would have said something meaningful to her. It's only been within the last few years of my life that I've found the beauty in that place. I was close to her and knew her well, and I know that hearing her only grandson tell her about his basketball game was more meaningful and important to her than my awareness of her suffering.
That beauty is not something I quite know how to put words to... it's a "riddle", as Dostoyevsky put it, and it is at the heart of why I'm an artist. Whatever it takes to capture that--that's what I'm after, and that's what keeps me going. It's a fearful thing to do, but not like the fear I felt when Jesse Ashe showed me up with his drawing skill. This fear is the kind that can silence demons. It's the kind that can keep your eyes on the beautiful.
