Daring to be a Creative

The art teacher came up to my desk, leaned over my shoulder and said, “Amanda, that’s what they get mental patients to do!” — a comment that did not exactly build my confidence as an art student. (Nor was it a high point in the field of teaching, shall we say.)

We had been given carte blanche in art class that afternoon so I was experimenting by dropping wet paint onto a sheet of paper, folding it over and smoothing my hand across it. I found the resulting abstract shapes of colour quite appealing. The art teacher did not. Oh well. I had no aspiration of a life in the visual arts at that time.

But fast forward five decades and I find myself wanting exactly that and, while getting closer to being able to say ‘I am a collage artist’, I also hold back from saying it with gusto. Could my reticence go back to that one experience in middle school? Can I really still be stumbling on that man’s ill-judged comment?

Maybe, but I think the notion of being a Creative, that is, someone who spends their time creating things in one medium or another, is a challenging one in this society. The ‘creative class’ is at once revered (“Oh, I could never do that! You’re so talented!”), reviled (“How about getting a real job?”) and rejected (performers who have lost their job in the now-closed Come From Away musical in Toronto are not eligible for employment insurance because they are hired as independent contractors. They are out of work and out of luck: No social safety for Creatives.).

I’m not looking to earn my living as a visual artist; I merely want to embrace that part of my evolving identity, which includes writer and community educator. I am (slowly) getting closer to inhabiting the artist part, to wit the collage illustrating this post: I have placed ‘writer’ and ‘artist’ in the centre of the piece and I shall continue to work on actually believing both.

That afternoon long ago, my art teacher couldn’t see beyond the paint. He saw only the Rorschach inkblot test in what were, for me, creative experiments in visual art. 

With my collages, I take paper and glue and images and I create with them a visual story that brings me not only pleasure but, often, also clarity of understanding about who I am in that moment of creative endeavour — something that can be as surprising as it is rewarding. So, never mind what Mr. Art Teacher said. I shall listen more to myself, keep pursuing my creative experiments and, one day, I’ll find myself standing tall and introducing myself with confidence not only as a capital W Writer, but also as a capital C capital A Collage Artist. It has as much to do with belief (harder) as it has with practice (easier). Onwards!

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NOTE: My creative collaborator, Deborah Schnitzer, will have an essay published in The Globe and Mail's First Person section on Wednesday, January 19th. I hope you'll read her work. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.