For senior Noura Kamari, stepping out of her comfort zone used to be extremely difficult. That was until she re-discovered her love for art.
“Because of my online [art] class, people ask to see my art, and it helped me meet new people and forced me to try new things,” Noura said.
Noura has lived her whole life being enamoured with anything artistic or creative. For her, art just came naturally, as if it were second nature. But, throughout high school, her passion for art fizzled out. The stress of schoolwork and all the other things she wanted or had to do took her away from her creative pastime.
“I’ve been into art my whole life, but I stopped [doing it] throughout high school,” Noura said. “But this year, I kind of missed it.”
Noura wasn’t sure she’d be able to squeeze the class into her schedule, yet her dedication and desire to reignite her love for art led her to take an online art class. This class is even more fast-paced than a normal class, giving more opportunities to try new things, pushing herself away from where she was most comfortable. The piece she is working on currently is a still life, and she’s using oil pastels.
Instead of doing the same things over and over, her class has introduced her to mediums of art she wouldn’t have even considered beforehand. One of her favorite examples of this is when she had to make a landscape.
“My teacher had me change [my work],” Noura said. “For some reason they had me do an alien invasion.”
Not every day does Noura draw with color, or furthermore, draw an alien invasion. That specific piece made her test the confines of what she normally did. But that’s why she loves her art class so much, because it pushes her past her mind’s boundaries so she can explore new parts of herself. She has found new people to look up to and has learned a lot about different artists from whom she can draw inspiration.
“I really like Claude Monet,” Noura said. “He has an impressionist style, so from afar you can see the image, but up close it looks abstract.”
This is just one of the examples of the figures she’s found to look up to. She has stated that she would love to try out the impressionist style, something she’s never done before. She’s wanted to try many different things, and another one of them would be sculpting.
“In seventh grade, I did a clay and sculpture class,” Noura said. “Ever since, I’ve wanted to do it again.”
If she hadn’t decided to reconnect with art, who knows where she’d be now or what new things would she have missed out on trying. By being stuck in the bubble of the same things she was consistently doing she wouldn’t have the friends she has now, or the role models she looks up to. She also would not have the courage to try things like sculpture, other types of art, or even skiing, a sport which she just recently joined at FHC. Art has taught her how to express herself and become creative in multiple ways.
She wants people to know that it’s okay to try new things, even if they may seem daunting or impossible.
“I would say to just start, even if you don’t know what to draw,” Noura said. “And many people say they don’t know how to draw or paint, but I don’t believe in that. You just have to do it.”
