I’ve always been somewhat of an artist. Afternoons spent in my Nana’s kitchen playing with her watercolours turned into advanced art classes and shoulder aches from hunching over a canvas for hours at a time. It made me reflect. My brain got the chance to go quiet and think about nothing but shapes and colours.
In a way, painting and drawing became meditative. Personal reflection came naturally, pouring onto the page with the colours, given a new channel that I didn’t initially recognise. I was never a perfect or particularly good artist. My art has always been with a hint of mess and muddling, but it was the process that mattered. The quiet in my brain, the reflection on who I was.
Identity revealing itself through art does sound infinitely tacky and cliche, I recognise that. But it’s a cliche for a reason – what is art but self-expression? If identity didn’t play a role in creation, then what’s the point? Everything would look the same, and everyone would interpret art without individuality and experience coming into play. They say a picture says a thousand words, and it’s undeniably true. You look upon a painting and you feel what the artist felt, you see into a private part of their soul that the artist has spent years of craft and skill to unveil, just for you.
When my Nana passed away, I inherited those same watercolours that I grew up painting with. Whenever I opened them, the smell whisked me back to her kitchen of roast potatoes and lilies. In the initial months after her death, I always thought she was so close when I painted. Watching to analyse my colour choice, to ask if I wanted a drink. If art can bring back lost loved ones, then there’s nothing more important. I still have her paintings, safe and loved. Her identity gets a chance to live on through her art, beyond her death.
It doesn’t need to be good. It doesn’t need to be a masterpiece. It can be a splodge of colour, a scrawl of graphite, a hodgepodge of acrylic and fine liner. It doesn’t matter – what matters is how you see yourself within that creation. What does that creation reveal about your own identity? How do you see yourself now? Who are you, how are you, what are you…art is a way of saying what you need to say without ever finding the words.
So go, pick up a pen. Who are you?
This article is from Braw Magazine Issue 3: Identity and Discovery.
Time to be Vulnerable: My Art
Featured image credit: Pexels.com
Journalism student at the University of Stirling & BRAW Magazine editor 24/25 and 25/26 🙂
You can see my portfolio here: https://www.clippings.me/alicepollard
