The Importance of Art in My Life

Article in brief: The author expresses the importance of art in one’s life.

What is art? Or shall I ask, what makes good art ‘good’? How do art professors worldwide decide whether a piece of art is ‘good’ or ‘horrible’ or ‘just fine’. If I know anything, it’s that art is self-expression at its best. I speak from experience when I say that art helped me release certain thoughts and ideas I never knew existed in my head. Art brought out parts of me I never dared exploring further. Art made me who I am, and most importantly, art taught me how to think.

For as long as I can remember, I was always sketching something on a piece of paper. Whether it’s on the notepads at hotel rooms, or napkins at restaurants, I always seemed to leave my mark everywhere I went. Whenever someone asks me what my favorite artwork is, I always say nature and Earth. If you take a look around, everything your eyes touch is art. We, ourselves, are works of art. The white tip of your fingernails, the details of your thumbprint, the lines on your knuckles; they’re all pieces of a greater, larger than life artwork. With all the things that happen in our individual lives, we seem to forget to take a moment and admire the art created by God himself. We let our fast lives pass us by without taking a moment to reflect.

I’ve always been the student who sits at the back of the class and fills her Math notebooks with drawings instead of formulas. Everyday after school I’d go back home and pick up a paintbrush, and just like that, I was in my own world. I was in a world where my inner, creative child ran and played freely. I was in a world where creativity was appreciated and I wasn’t so out of the box anymore. If I have been, in reality, ‘inside’ the box though, my creative spirit would cease to exist. There were no words needed, just beautiful strokes of different colors, and I would be free at last.

I’m at a point in life where people constantly ask me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ or ‘Now that you wrote a book, is this the career choice you want to take for the rest of your life?’ or the ever so famous, ‘Don’t study Politics, it’s a dead end.’ I want to write, I want to publish more books, I want to pursue a career in the political world, but most importantly, I want to create. I want to go on different paths in my career, and I want to do that in the most creative ways possible. I want to take my next steps with art as my backbone. I don’t know where the road will take me next, and that is scary, but I find comfort in the fact that my brushes will always be in my backpack. Art will always be there for me, and I will always be there for art.