Timeless Words

Whew, I almost didn't make it! I've been up for a couple of hours working on a new drawing, and almost forgot to post this. I promised myself I would blog at least once a day...it's taking effort since I spend most of my time at my day job on the computer, so of course I have no desire to be on one when I get home. But obviously this is important work, so I'm here holding my tired eyes open!



Anyways, enough complaining...I mentioned in my last entry that I dug up my old Artist's Statement from my last year of college, early in the semester. I've since written a new one, but this original one suits my creative process and what inspires me a little better, as well as my journey to love art in general. I ended up getting an A on it *smile*. The main objective was to define myself as an artist, and I kid you not when I say it was probably the hardest assignment I'd ever gotten. How does one define oneself when you're not quite sure where you want to be? I have a better focus now than I did then, but reading back on it, I see that I had a pretty good idea of what path I wanted to take, even if I was a bit idealistic about how I was going to do it. I'm wiser now, but most of the statement rings true in my daily endeavors of making my dream a reality.

Artists are complicated people. We go through all sorts of transitional periods. We can jump through all different mediums, all different styles, and all different subject matter before finally settling down on one specific type of artistic movement, that we will forever define ourselves by. I figured I had already done that, without having to go through the trouble of jumping through all those hoops and obstacles. That is, until I went to college, and discovered that there is a lot more out ther than I thought. That interested me to the point of confusion, and my definition of myself as an artist changed again and again, until I was asked to sit down and write an artistic definition of myself. I see now that there are more levels to my art than I even realized, and now I feel I can finally place it into a category.

Primarily, my artistic interest was geared toward cartoons. I grew up fascinated my moving drawings, from early black and white Betty Boop shorts to elaborately animated Disney films. I loved to draw and then color it in with paint or colored pencils. So rather than pay full attention to storylines, I picked apart methods of drawing, movement, color and figure, and began to copy it. This is primarily what animation is about; copying what you see and putting your own spin on someone else's idea. So being a cartoonist was my first level. But then I discovered I could look at a real thing, or a photograph of a real thing, and copy it almost exactly. I loved doing portraits more than anything, so that would make me a portrait artist too. As I got older and discovered the way the world can be if you're Black and Female in America, racial and social issues crept into my work. So I became an artist with meaning and and mission to expose these issues to the world. Various events in my life have affected me in many different ways, so I used art as a form of therapy, to cleanse my mind and soul. My work ventured from realism, to impressionism, to expressionism, and back to realism. So I became an artist in all of these realms. One could definitely say I have jumped through many hoops to get to this point, and I still have many to go.

So who am I as an artist, exactly? I'll say that I am a painter that uses drawing as a foundation, a map to guide me through my ideas. I love the cartoonic style, and utilize it through all sorts of moods and issues, whether they be positive, negative, or none of the above. my style is very precise, although I like to loosen up once and a while, and let my mind go free and my hand flow through my work. I can make you laugh, make you cry, make you think, or simply give you something that is interesting to look at. I can't define myself as an artist, and I don't think any artist can. There are so many levels to being an artist, and no matter how long we have been in the field, there are still parts of ourselves that are waiting to be discovered.

Copyright Tasha Naomi Williams, December 16th, 2002