Self Portrait of a True Artist

Brush on canvas, draft pencil and paint strokes to define shape and tone... A piece of artwork certainly. Disgustingly, not art. 

I wasn't an art college undergraduate anymore. Back then I was young, naïve, ignorant and pathetic - a life yet to be lived and a person still to be defined. She had been moulded by societal indoctrination, and an education system contrived by a patriarchal government determined to keep her sick and stupid. I was not that woman, for years of misery and kindness had crafted within my form something and someone new.

I had lived life by their rules long enough, thoroughly convinced into believing I desired a nuclear family and suburban lifestyle. That it was my fate and thus set into the fabric of my being; want of a husband, 2.2 children, a detached three bedroom house, a job I didn't like and so-called friends to complain to. I'd tried all that, it hadn't worked for me, and that was all my fault apparently. But I ask you, why should I be blamed for infertility? Or a weak-minded partner unable to resist his urges around younger, prettier women?

Because of their expectations, I lost forty years to empty hopes and dreams, cigarettes and bottles of wine - spent in self-loathing and misplaced guilt. They'd stolen my youth, my health, my dignity, and still they were not done with me. Keeping to the conventions of my degree, I became an artist, working for pittance at first, although I battled for a reputation and was victorious. But fame breeds jealousy, eyes to watch and judge every action or thought. It was exhausting to act the characture of myself.

I escaped their influence and took off to the island where I'd once spent a summer with my parents. Life had appeared... easier there. They may have been designated under a government body and maintained connections to modern society, however the distance left them to basically care for themselves - through a collective community responsibility. I used a portion of the wealth I'd accumulated to have a house built on the far north of the island, set away yet part of the village should I require necessities, medical aid and socialisation. Those were kind people, some of the best examples one could offer of humanity.

And so I'd had ten years to figure out who I really was, and what I wanted from life. While my health limited me to what I could get done, and for that I felt cheated, I was able to find a meagre sense of spiritual peace. 

Society still wasn't done with me. They extended their influence through social media to solidify my name in infamy. They claimed to adore me for my art, then scorned me when I refused to sell or exhibit it. For that I became an urban legend, a mountain to traverse, a prize to be won. Only the brave or wealthy could hope to tame me, as if I were some unruly beast. They thought they could wear me down by reducing me to the sum of my parts - my weight, my hair, my teeth... They wondered what man would want me, then which was worthy enough to tie me down. Daytime television speculated of my diet and my sense of style, then evening talk shows questioned my political and religious views. I was an enigma. They depicted me as a role model - because then they could denounce my worth.

So I planned to leave a parting gift. A true and pure expression of myself that could once and for all end the charade. I grew weary, and my body weakened by the day - a cancer or so they assumed had pervaded me for the final time. I was done with the spectacle. I was not a celebrity, I was not a role model, and I was no one's prize. Unfortunately, that was something that had to be proven, rather than simply declared. 

But how could I possibly illustrate all that I was upon an 24x30 inch canvas? How could I shape my identity and worth through colour, shape, and texture? I was not a drawing on a page, my colour was not simply my physical hue, and my texture was not shared by any fabric.

The planning stage led me to an epiphany; I was not just a face, I was myself a work of art. I was a collage of my ancestors, my upbringing, my hopes and dreams, my emotions, my thoughts, my insecurities, my loves and fears, my pain, and all that gave me joy... How to translate that upon a single flat surface? I had no clue.

That is why I had sat staring at an empty canvas for two years. For even during that time I continued to change in ways that would render earlier attempts obsolete. My mind and my hands were failing me - I was running out of time. 

... There was something that I'd always adored about a blank canvas. An empty, clean surface that may be transformed in many ways to form something beautiful. It is the epitome of potential, and the same is true of a person. We each enter this world with potential - ourselves a blank canvas to begin shaping into art. Though we are not without our foundations - our heritage, the family we are born to, and it is the same in that a canvas too had to be created. Plants are processed into fabric, stretched across a wooden frame, and stapled into place. As much could be said for people. While the plant fibres used to make a canvas may vary, and the wooden frame can come from any tree, it retains its potential for the artist sat before it. It may become a great painting, or drawing, or cut up and stuck together in an entirely new way. 

It was that potential that frightened me. I was no longer a blank canvas, and at the same time I feared the art I had become could never be recreated through the mediums at my disposal. I had tried clay and metal, though neither were suitable... Then it hit me. People are not paintings, and I was no sculpture - I was a tapestry, a collage of all I was and all I could be. 

I put away the easel and took out my needles instead. With all means at my disposal, I employed people with greater skill than I to weave threads of my hair, and plants that were significant to me. Bark of the tree I'd had a rope swing tied to in my childhood, the flowers I picked for my wedding and my parents' funerals, and those that were said to represent the trials I'd endured. I made dyes of my colours, both physical and spiritual, shading the fibres in all of my hues. Then I took to weaving. I stitched words and dates, took portions of my artwork and added those. I poured my heart and soul, my sweat and tears into each row. Places I'd been, people I loved, my mistakes and my triumphs, my shapes and colours and textures, until finally I completed it. And then, I left the ends unwoven - for I still had potential within.

I was flown to the hospital on the mainland the next day. 

What became of my tapestry? It was put on display for one week in the community art gallery. Only those to have granted me one shred of common decency and respect were invited to view it in person - the island residents, my friends and remaining family. Everyone else would have to admire it from a digital photograph uploaded to the internet.

Over time, my self portrait would be shrouded in theory and conspiracy, as it should be. Then I was wrapped in it and buried next to my home, overlooking the turbulent sea. That was how I had wished it, and that was how I went. Because all that I am and was deserved to fade and die with me. The rest of the world should only ever know an impression, one that they would come to speculate, admire, and reject for generations after... Such is the true nature of art.