My Story

How I ended up a dancing artist is a bit of a long mess.  But to simplify everything, let’s just say I got really sidetracked.

It started in college as I was working toward an art degree.  I had been finding problems with my career choice.  For one, the high-end art college I was trying to get into was incredibly expensive.  Secondly, I didn’t know any real artists who were making a living with their art.  As a young aspiring artist my confidence was continually shot down by the general opinion that trying to make a living as an artist is not an intelligent choice; besides the fact that art school literally costs as much as law school… hmmm.

I was also perpetually racked with fear.  I was so fearful that I would never be good enough, that I wasn’t quite talented enough.  Every assignment was either a masterpiece or a dramatic failure that revealed to the world I was an imposter, that I didn’t know what I was doing and shouldn’t even be trying.  Back then I didn’t understand how talent is cultivated.

Trying to come up with a better idea for what to do with myself was proving difficult.  I just wasn’t interested in anything that might make me a living.  Not engineering, computer science, or psychology, all of which I did actually try.

So, when I took up lindy hop and swing dancing, and started earning an income from teaching and performing, it was pretty easy to push everything aside; college, art and all the worries about what I should actually do with my life.

Dancing was easy.  The steps to gaining the skill were simple and obvious; find someone to show you how to do it right, then practice it over and over again.  Eventually your body learns it for you.  There were definite frustrations and skills I had a hard time understanding, but overcoming these difficulties was at least foreseeable.  Which was something I just never had with art; the question of what makes good art was so cryptic and ambiguous it seemed unattainable.

In art the skills often seemed like a god-sent gift rather than something to work at.  It was only through dancing that I began to realize that the skills required to be a good artist could be obtained in a similar way – through practice, focus, and good teachers, and that the word “talent” was a myth, even in the art world.

I am sometimes disappointed that so many years went by that I didn’t do much art.  It took me 10 years of dancing to realize that I am an artist.  Yet  there was something transformative about this decade I spent dancing.  For one, it derailed a belief system that defined talent and skill as unattainable supernatural powers.  And secondly, it taught me the steps to learning one of these supernatural powers.  Talent really is overrated.

Throughout my dancing decade I held onto all of my art supplies, and I always knew in my heart that ultimately I would come back around to painting again.  I have always known that I am meant to create imagery.  The difference is that I no longer fear it.  It isn’t a mystical skill you are either born with or not.  It’s a skill you either continue honing or you don’t.  I know that talent isn’t inborn, it comes through hard work and dedication afforded by passion.

I now have friends who make art for a living, and just knowing that it is possible and attainable is a much needed comfort and inspiration.  It’s a relief to finally feel welcomed by the world, to feel comfortable with my place in it, and to know that what I suspected all along, that this is definitely what I should do with my life, is right.