I have never excelled at any form of physical art.
I can harness ideas in my head down to each minuscule detail, yet when I attempt to display my thoughts in the form of visuals it always ends up bland and basic with warped lines, muddled colors, and a childlike edge that should have vanished a decade ago.
Three-dimensional drawing? Impossible. How do people draw three-dimensional art on a two-dimensional page?
Shadows? Also impossible. How are shadows painted without any sun?
My cousins and I used to do drawing competitions when we were younger. One person would start as the judge, and the winner would progress to judge the sketches in the next round. There was often a generic theme for our drawings: Christmas, summer, houses, and people were common keynotes in the plethora of sketches we created.
A portrait might show beautiful water lilies sailing under a bridge, but it could never convey the smell of the air or the frogs that swim in the currents.
I seldom won a round considering my artistic abilities were subpar.
Time, space, and depth all seem to be lost in the art I construct.
When I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City last year, I was engulfed by walls of oil paintings and ceiling-length sculptures of intricately carved statues. Each of these exhibits housed a story, nurturing a lifeline to the artist’s thoughts and the sentiments of the era.
There were walls of antique violins, dusted by nothing but time and splendor from its moments in the limelight. Entire rooms were dedicated to gilded furniture and resplendent chandeliers, each twinkling with such artful intent that I knew I would try in vain to recreate it.
To me, the art didn’t just exist within the stone columns of the museum. On my New York City trip, I saw The Music Man on Broadway, witnessing people dance and sing and move in forms without the restrictions of a canvas or frame. My interactions with the streets involved spurts of kaleidoscope lights mingled with the jarring glare from billboards, followed naturally by huffing taxis and pedestrians.
It was a picture worth a thousand words.
Not a picture worth the recognition in a renowned museum on Fifth Avenue. Not a picture glazed with layers of oil paints or decorated in fluffs of tulle in the form of an angelic ballerina sculpture.
Considering I never had the performance skills to execute a physical portrait, the only way for me to capture the electricity of life is with my words. A portrait might show beautiful water lilies sailing under a bridge, but it could never convey the smell of the air or the frogs that swim in the currents. It could hardly foreshadow an impending rainstorm and capture the purple bolts of lightning—or the thunder that follows.
My life isn’t oils and paints. It’s one moving picture worth a thousand words. A million even, if I have the time to summon prose that justifies the beauty of all the art in the world.
