TwinB is in the midst of applying to attend the Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD); one of the requirements is an Artists' Statement. She composed a piece that sums up her life beautifully and it made me a tad teary. Her Grandma thought she was going to tough it out as I read it to her but was practically bawling by the end. (HAH-ha! she ain't so tough after all!)
TwinB told me she thought she should have gone back to school earlier but I pointed out that she most likely hadn't been ready till now. She responded that she was much 'shinier' now and probably had needed all that time in the tumbler.
"Personal Statement"
or, "A Brief History of My Time, So Far".
It seems too lofty an undertaking for me to write an Artist’s Statement, but perhaps my left hand is up to the job. After all, it was my left hand that set me apart from the first day of kindergarten, and later distinguished my supreme reign year after year as the class Artist. A “good drawer” was one thing, but a Left-Handed Artist? Those were words you could repeat to yourself in the mirror.
The onset of puberty and a stint in the psych ward complicated things. “Crazy Artist”, the mirror amended, and my left hand surged with the anarchic landscape of suicide. It was satisfying. More than that it was a reason to stay alive; I could destroy every part of myself, but never my left hand. It had value incongruous with what the mirror told me.
At the age of 17 I moved from my hometown of Kitimat, B.C., to attend the Art Institute of Vancouver. Propelled by my parents’ money and years of affirmation from teachers and peers, I left with my high school art award and every intention of being a Real Artist, a Digital Animator, a creator of imaginary worlds. I was shipped home ten months later, crippled by a second nervous breakdown.
“Mentally Ill Adult”, was the merciless report of the mirror.
Everything stopped except my left hand. I picked up addictions but never set down the pencil. Worthless, Failure, Drop-out, Stoner – these words the mirror spat in my face could not coexist with the woman who compulsively created and drew. Like the old jokes, my left hand really did feel like another person.
Without my mom I’m sure I would have ended up like any of the hometown heroes I wasted time with. But she had a ferocious love in her, and an “art room” packed full enough of every kind of paper, brush, canvas and pigment to render it a tiny labyrinth. I spent a lot of time in there, painting, penning and colouring images she would mount, frame, and hang in the local museum alongside her still lifes and landscapes. We presented lessons in watercolour, pencil, and pastel to every class in every elementary school in town. We orchestrated two school-wide murals involving all the kids. We designed and painted every set and backdrop for the high school theatre, semester after semester. I even had the opportunity to instruct my former teachers in the local Art Club, and they began to mistake my work in the museum for my mom’s. This was high praise, because to my mind, my mom – “Mrs. Hutson” to the kids – had always been primarily an Artist, as sure as the ocean was the ocean and a raven was a raven.
But the mirror still called me Unemployed. So in 2007 I risked a move to Calgary, where I would replace the label with more respectable ones like Janitor, Night Stocker, Cashier, and finally, Disabilities Worker. My left hand never stopped. Every spare moment, I drew on paper towels and unwanted receipts. (This made me more proficient in Bic pen than almost any other medium.) I’d draw remembered glimpses of the forest I’d left behind and abandon them to be found by coworkers – waiting, hoping, for them to call me that ethereal word I wouldn’t call myself – Artist.
Other times I just got in trouble for “doodling”.
It’s hard to see an artist in a face that’s been spattered with so much toilet water over the years. But there must be one in there, above the eyes and a little ways back, because every day it sends its signals like Morse code down the dendrites of my arm to my unstoppable, unappeasable, undeniable left hand. As a lifelong mental patient, it’s a daunting thought to look in the mirror and say, “Student”. I hope I’m ready to take on this new challenge. Because by now, I know there’s only one word to describe what I’ve always been, and what I want to be.
