“I drew this on a tablet. Some of my most recent memories of drawing remain being tucked in bed with a tablet in the dark, like a child reading with a flashlight, before my mum flipped my blanket open and raided me. That was probably ten years ago — all I’m saying is that it felt like last month when I returned home for the first time since I had left for the UK two years ago. She claimed she had changed, but facts proven, she hasn’t. For that reason, I hid my iPad from her while trying to complete this drawing. Instead of ‘drawing’ I told her I was writing a short story. But even as I am writing this first paragraph and my boyfriend starts to peek, I subconsciously bend my laptop screen so that he doesn’t get any spoilers.”
“Creativity can be a very personal thing — not in the sense that I must hide it like a diary, but quite the contrary — so personal to me that every feedback on a piece directs back to one square metre of the bottom floor of my heart. As I grew older my genre of work tilted slightly to the realistic and autofictional side. At sensitive moments comments could feel like an evaluation of my own life, depending on how much I relate to my work. I do, however, keep seeking feedback. Surely the debate on the connectivity between work and author doesn’t always come with a correct answer.”
“I hid from my mum not always because of whether she likes my art (in fact, she does), but because the idea that drawing can only be an ‘unpaid hobby’ was deeply rooted in my education. I started drawing portraits since I knew how to hold a pencil. I had always wondered how I never reached the level of some of the better artists I saw on social media. Do I not love my hobby enough to practice five hours a day? Did these people slack off to draw while I was keeping up with my grades? Or is there a difference in born talent? Or maybe there is always a ‘better’ in everything, and I only need to be better than myself.”
“So none of that really matters because creativity can be very personal, in a way that benefits my mental health. I feel inspired when I look at the reactions on my readers’ faces (and know that they are aware of it), when they say ‘you should definitely publish this!’ and realise I have rarely given that a thought before, when some of them love my work so much they begin to love me as a whole. I have learnt to transform negative feedback to enrich my colours, to explore new prompts, and to feed my joke palette. None of this would have happened if I had not shown my work outside of that tiny workroom.”
