An Artist is His Own Fault

IN THIS PIECE:

1. Prologue
2. Graphic Novel - short story, loose format
3. Addendum

Prologue

I took a seminar class where we had a different speaker come in and talk each week. From the start, I suspect my heart was not in it. I came into my writing program with the same mentality I've had for the last five years, which was that my parents would be unhappy if I were an artist, so this was just 'temporary'. It was just for myself. I've always hid behind that.

My graduate advisor warned us about that at the beginning of the year, actually. He said that the students who went into this saying they didn't care about publishing, that they were just doing this for themselves, tended to do poorly in the context of a cohort of writers. And he was right. My attitude kept me from reaping the full benefit of the writing program. It was hard for me to sit there and listen to established writers tell me to write every day, to ignore the naysayers, to persevere even if nothing works out for my entire life. I've always been very focused on tangible, objective success. I get anxious thinking that I will never be 'good enough' even as I am ironically both sure and worried that nobody cares.

Through my scholarship program and internship work I had the pleasure of meeting several artists outside of the classroom. They pummeled those same lessons of perseverance into me. I could see that the only thing stopping me from being an artist, whatever that means, is that I was too afraid to draw every day. The artists, like the writers, created every day. It didn't matter if it was a sketch that nobody saw or a poem for submission. I am terrified of the risk involved in drawing daily. What if I draw something bad?

During this year countless people have told me that I am a talented artist and that I seem like I am having a great time. I cringe at those words. I have always felt that people are being too nice and just enabling me when they tell me I am good at art. I never know how to respond. I also feel terrible when my depressed friends tell me how much fun I must be having. Likewise when people are in awe at how busy I am. Facebook collects the highlights reel and ignores that I spent the majority of this year in bed.

I wrote the following piece in response to "An Artist is His Own Fault", a quote by John O'Hara. After puzzling over those words for quite some time, I kept returning to the same gut feeling of 'an artist is not his own fault'. It too strongly reminded me of when people have told me to just stop being depressed. And yet, it's more complex than that. I sought to create a piece that reflects the crossroads between lessons learned and the perpetuity of feeling sad.

An Artist is His Own Fault

Quote by John O'Hara

Piece by Julianne Eleanor

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Note: there are two very influential artists not mentioned in this piece due to time constraints, but whom I would like to thank anyway since this piece is public. Fei Fei, who was the first person to make me realize I should just draw more. And Richard Hearnes, a wonderful artist who opened his house to the Mitchell Scholars and who made me believe for a moment that I could be an artist myself. It's been two weeks since then and I am still believing it.