Diary of a Starving Artist Part 1

The Journey

When I was about 9 or 10, my sister moved in to our 3 bedroom unit to help my mum cope with the raging divorce and custody battle my father was putting us all through.

My sister means the world to me, she’s wonderful, she’s beautiful, and she’s one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever experienced.

She is also very creative, and found many ways of making money to help us pay the bills.

She taught English to an international student, she was always working in food somewhere, she was the main staff at a prominent hotel in our area, she occasionally helped neighbours with farming and gardening, my sister did it all.

If she could physically handle the labor, she was on it.

On top of all this, my sister found time for a creative outlet.

She created her own business making dream catchers, and selling them online and to locals in our town.

Now, I know its not exactly appropriate, at the time I had no idea about cultural appropriation and I’m sure she didn’t either, and given the extent of dream catchers made of plastic in dollar stores, it seemed like fair game.

Probably doesn’t fly today, but at the time, the foundation of dream catchers provided my sister with a canvas to do her own form of art. Twisting beads, fabrics, stones, feathers and wires into an aesthetic of dream catcher I still don’t see anywhere else.

As a kid, it was like watching magic.

This was right about the time that eBay had gained popularity, and soon Etsy entered the arena.

My whole life I loved art, painting, creating, and when I saw that you no longer needed a brick and mortar location to make and sell incredible wears, I was certain of my future as a creative maker.

No matter what happened from that point on, I was inspired, I saw my sister make a small business, and I knew I could do it someday too.

Desire:

As much as my family encouraged my art and enjoyed some of my work, it wasn’t exactly the success they were looking for.

I was pushed in every area they involved me in, and art was seen as a fun side thing.

My grades in other subjects were always more important, and I became very stressed trying to achieve what my mum in particular wanted from me.

It left very little energy for artistic growth, and if I tried to draw something the right way I would become angry and sad at the displeasing results.

I didn’t work at it every day, it wasn’t my obsession at first.

But I started reading young adult fiction, Skullduggery Pleasant for direct reference, and world and themes gripped me.

I was obsessed with the illustrated coveres, and the insert art of different characters.

But it wasn’t enough, I ran out of books as Landy was writing them.

Like an addict scouring the roads for cigarettes with a lil tobacco left in them, I became obsessed with Deviant Art fanart and fanfictiononline.

Discovering fan art completely changed my life path.

This wasn’t just pretty art, it was art that signified love for a fandom, and what I once enjoyed alone, was celebrated by a whole online community.

I started making fan art myself, just for my own enjoyment.

I became obsessed with making portraits of the characters or my interpretations of them, so much so I took my sketchbook to school so I had something to do that made me happy, instead of my constant fear and anxiety.

Suddenly, other kids started noticing my work, and soon someone asked if they could pay me in lunch money for a portrait.

I started up a frikin line of people who were paying me 50c for a pencil portrait.

Soon, we had an actual art class in my year 8 schedule, and I was able to show what I was really made of.

It gave me a goal, good grades in return for me getting to do art, it was perfect.

Eventually the time came where I had to decide what I wanted to do when I left school, and I was firm, I had a dream and it made perfect sense.

I will go to university and study fine art, history and all, and then I will become a curator until I get my own gallery or auction house, and the money will help me fund the art I love to make.

Anything was a guarantee if I completed university.

If you read my “Art degrees are a scam” blog post, you’ll know university and me didn’t go great together.

To recap very briefly, due to deferring against my better judgement, my courses being changed like a rug pull from under my feet, and a debilitating chronic illness, I was unable to completely my degree, and now the debt will forever haunt me.

Dropping out was absolutely crushing, but it was inevitable, I couldn’t make it to 80% of my classes because of my insane health issues, and unfortunately health dictates most of what we can accomplish even if you try your best.

This university crushed my spirits, and made me feel like a huge failure as an artist, I hated myself and the path I had taken.

When I dropped out I thought I would straight up float into the abyss and never emerge ever again.

But I didn’t.

Finding My Reason:

I have an insurmountable amount of pain in my life and in my soul.

An upbringing of domestic violence, lawsuits, neglect and physical disability with raging mental illness stemming from trauma people cannot fathom.

I have been hurt over and over again, not accidentally, systematically.

When you live like that, experience life that way, people lose the ability to relate to you.

People don’t know how to talk about complex pain, complex trauma, and how it can destroy you from the inside out, spiralling into something bigger than you, effecting people you never wanted to hurt, but now your hurt hurts other.

I make art so that I can express something I can’t communicate through words.

I make art so that others who cannot express it, find solace in the art that expresses their experience as well.

It’s a secret language, I make something about my experience and then I put it out into the world, and even if its just one person, that person who finds it and tells me “I see me in this” or “I relate to this so much”, is the person worth it all.

I had to restart after university, rediscover why I make, and then I had to silent the voices of judgement, the words like “that’s not real art” or “that’s overdone” or “its not modern” and I had to pay attention to my own voice.

Is this how I feel?

Why is this how I feel?

How have I communicated how I feel to the audience?

If it grips just one person, that person is the reason.

The pain is constant, like a song that never stops howling, a dog barking out for anyone to respond, a machine that won’t stop whirring until it shuts down.

I have to make something, I have to release it.

My business has really kicked off this year.

I tried last year and became quite discouraged by the event organisers, who did not look out for my safety and fell through on important details.

Then I became homeless for 4 months at the start of this year (that’s another story), and I thought for sure I had lost momentum and wouldn’t be able to pick it back up.

However, I had joined an art collective, and due to my relationships with them and being a bit more into the community than last year, I was invited to a market and anxiously accepted.

I found myself in the middle of a massive queer market at a local university (not the one I went to lol) and it was there with my lil prints and very shabby market stall that I discovered how much love my work really attracts.

Even if people couldn’t afford to buy anything, people would come up just to tell me how much they love my work and how talented they thought I was. People running to classes literally stopped, back tracked and told me they loved my work and “sorry I can’t stop!”, those are the real ones you guys, and if you’re one of those people you frikin rock.

I made $140 on my first proper market, at an event with mostly broke students.

The money isn’t it, it’s the fact that people bought $140 worth of stuff from me, people saw my work and directly expressed to me that my work is important, relatable, speaks to them, fills them with something they can’t explain.

That’s why I do it, this experience gives me life.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be one of those 6 figure artists hustling their butts off, but I do my best, I haul my stuff in Ubers and pay the stall fees and pretend the debt collectors are just playing until I can Afterpay the bill.

It’s a hectic fucking existence, and it’s the most alive I’ve felt my whole life. <3