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If you want to return to your creative roots, read my story. It could help you. My cousin was an artist who possessed more talent in his eyelid than I did in my whole body. When we would get together to play, I would spend most of the time watching him draw.

He was older than me, and much more progressive, and his outlook towards his art seemed so nonchalant, so natural. He would just sit down and begin to draw.

I remember him drawing a dragon with such impeccable detail, such precision. I wondered why I struggled so hard with it. Was I even an artist? Maybe I was an imposter. What made me more of an artist than the neighborhood kid down the block who ate crayons and bugs and still wet his bed and created nothing but trouble for his mother? I couldn’t answer any of those questions.

I decided, then, that the only way to find an answer was to try to be an artist and see what happened. That’s it! I would try to be an artist again! I would draw, and paint, and create. I would create without consideration for the outcome, yet I would clearly define my premises, my point of view, my focus. I would use the lessons learned from my two early experiences to create art that was significant and relevant. So that’s what I did. I started to really create things.

Throughout High School, I was the “art kid”. I took every art class my High School offered. I overloaded myself. My art consumed me. I became so enchanted by it and everything it stood for and the way it made me feel. I pounded out art like I was an assembly line in a factory. I sold art to my teachers; I sold art to my family and friends. I gave a lot of art away. I was successful because I was passionate.

The pieces themselves had no real value to me; what proved valuable to me was what my art meant to others. I learned my final lesson in being an artist at that period in High School: there is no artist, living or deceased, that created art for themselves and themselves alone. An artist creates for others. If we, as artists, are indifferent to the public’s perception of our work, our success will loom in the darkness of our own selfishness, and never fully be realized. High School was my own tiny renaissance. I will never forget those days.

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