I Failed Art in First Grade

How I became an artist anyway.

Every artist has a moment when the world shifted. For some, it's a teacher's praise. For others, it's seeing a painting that rearranges something inside them. For me, it took three moments. And the first one was a failure.

Part I. The Ship

I was in first grade. Art class. The teacher told us to make a crayon picture of a ship on the ocean. Everyone around me grabbed their colors and began drawing. I froze. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have a picture in my mind of a ship, let alone how it might look on the ocean. I wasn't even sure what a ship looked like. I asked the teacher for help, and she was curt: "Oh Mary, just do a red boat on blue water." But that was no help at all. I couldn't picture a red boat. I felt unsure, even a little ashamed.

I honestly don't remember if I was able to create anything at all. But I remember that was the day I failed at something everyone else in the class found easy. I didn't know it then, but that moment wasn't a verdict. It was just the first part of a story that wasn't finished yet.

Part II. The Cloudscape

Many years later, not long after my first watercolor attempts, I was driving and saw a cloudscape ahead. Something about it stopped me. I pulled over, took a photo, and later painted it. 

That moment felt different.

I wasn't trying to follow instructions or draw something someone else told me to see. I saw something, I felt something, and I wanted to capture it. Nobody had to tell me what to draw. I wasn't copying a picture from a book. I saw the world and responded to it. 

That was the first time I realized I was thinking about watercolor even when I wasn't painting — like, on my own time, doing errands. And there I was, pulled over on the side of the road with my phone camera. The moment registered — I felt like a creative person for the first time. But I still didn't put it all together.

Part III. The Word

My mom actually was an artist. She'd known she was an artist since she was a little girl. She could draw beautifully, paint with oils, acrylics, pastels. She was so talented.

As a child I would ask her to draw me a girl's face, or a horse, or a butterfly, and she would quickly, fluidly, magically, draw whatever I asked for in a flourish, and I would color it with my Crayola crayons. 

Over the years, I became comfortable with making big poster signs. Happy Birthday! Vote for Mary for School Treasurer! Welcome Home! I had a way with adding a simple accessory to make two pieces of clothing become an outfit. And I continued to love coloring, even as an adult. 

But these were disparate things to me — neat hand-printed words laid out legibly on paper, using Seventeen magazine accessory advice to style the clothes I wore, and coloring in a coloring book (like a child).

Then, this happened:

A year or so after I started watercolor, I showed my mom something I'd just painted. She looked at it and then she looked at me and asked: "Did you just make this up out of your head?" I said yes. 

And she said, "Mary, you are an artist." 

I was stunned. Also, immediately, my heart and brain knew it to be true.

And the more so because my mom said it. An artist. Family and friends coveted her sketches and paintings. People paid money for her creations. And she said I was an artist. That she said it. That she knew it. That she labeled it. (So many gifts she gave me in that one sentence.)

What I Hope You Take From This

I used to think the moment I knew myself to be creative was the cloudscape. And my mom's words allowed me to identify as an artist. But looking back yet again and recalibrating, I think all three moments were necessary.

• The art assignment in first grade? For decades I interpreted that experience as evidence I was not artistic.
• The cloudscape I was compelled to photograph? That moment taught me I am creative.
• My mom's words? Well, she voiced what was to her a fact — I am an artist.

You know how there can be a moment in time when every changes? Mine happened to come in three parts. And the first one was a failure. That turns out to be perhaps the most important detail of all. 

Maybe I had so little fear when I started watercolor because, in the back of my mind, I'd already decided I was a failure at art. What did I have to lose?

I felt free to try painting a cloudscape and something I made up in my head because there was nothing riding on it. I do know I was thoroughly enjoying the creativity and the color and the experience of watercolor — it was just me, doing something fun. 

I wonder, was there a moment — or maybe several moments like me — when you began to think of yourself differently as a creative person?

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