Yesterday, sometime before my most difficult and most respected professor told me I was doing a good job, a thought that I had never considered before came to me: I think I may be more interested in being a teacher than I am interested in being an artist. And to write that here, in this place I have devoted to reflection about being an artist, feels a little like blasphemy. I mean, I love art and I especially love painting, but in that moment with my eyes stinging from mineral spirits, I realized that the thing I want to do is touch the lives of kids in real and direct ways-- that I don't want to be in a studio alone all day-- I want to be schools, opening the world to young people.
Yes, my drive to do well at the trade that art and painting are is strong-- but often I find myself being driven to do well for the benefit of the people who will be looking to me to help them do my best. I do not work hard in the studio for collectors or currators, I work hard for students who will come after me, for the lives that my art will allow me to pour myself into. That is what I want.
I've thought often about the near sense of repulsion I feel about a life of petitioning to galleries, painting and showing. But in light of this new opinion I have discovered within myself, I wonder if may that just means that my gift is slightly different from other people who study art. I think my desire for my art has always been to communicate, I have always been drawn to it for the joy that it brings other people and for the capacity that it has to fulfill the longings of my loyal and relational soul.
Maybe this is why we are so careful about others being pleased with the things we create-- maybe we have this innate quality that makes for the purpose of seeing joy in the eyes of other people who see what we create. Perhaps.
