This Next Step

All throughout primary school, those one-and-a-half hour lessons of collaging pictures with stationary paper or doing line drawings felt frivolous, only dabbling on the surface of discovery. Friends cared very little and, as a result, so did the teachers. I felt I could do more—needed more. How could I say I loved art without committing to it as much as I possibly could?

So I tried. I took four lessons a week outside of school. On Tuesday afternoons, in a small arts centre, they showed me how to draw objects step-by-step and I created compositions with poster paints and watercolour. Then, at the 8Q Art Loft, I had a lesson a little more exploratory and experimental. I learned of O’Keefe cropping, and how to make paper. On another day there was a Russian woman who set up still lifes of styrofoam cubes or cloths and vases, and I sat for two hours sketching the shadows against the light. At the end of the week, I went to a ceramic studio to coil pencil holders and sculpt in slabs.

And then, opportunity presented itself. It simply came to light and after that there was no question in my mind of any other place I would rather be. I decided to come to an arts school to do it everyday. To do that and so much more. To learn about so much more. And beyond that, to be with people that were the same as I was and to be immersed in a space with the same core passion as me.

Art school was exactly that for me. A place for art and that felt simply perfect. Wooden sculptures were elegantly placed along the corridors and along the walls hung abstract drawings that, maybe someday, would be my own. Artistic energy encircled me, danced though the blocks and I mused in its very glory. Walking through the doors that first day, art was now a dream that could be realised.

As I sat in the studio, I marvelled in the fact that each hour would be spent here, no longer touch-and-go activities, but a place for art each day. I had made it to a point where I could state my love for art with conviction. And beside me were other eager students seemingly just as in love. I came to know one elemental thing: I had come home.