This blog is a sort of refuge for me. It is a place that helps me clear my thoughts a little. I have been coming to it a lot recently most likely because I have had a lot on my mind.
I am not at all sure about what I want to do with my life. There are plenty of things that I would very much like to do, but the matter of combining them together into a feasable, coherent format constitutes an obstructive wall that I cannot climb.
Seven years ago, I thought I had it all figured out. That was the age when I first started calling myself an artist; I have since retracted that title from myself as I believe it to be something I am yet to earn. If truth be told, I was a right little arrogant fucker during my early-to-mid teens, and it was only when I realised how unknowing and inexperienced I was that things began to change.
I now have an emotional complex surrounding the unfounded surety with which I thought I knew things in the past; I don't want to be arrogant or pretentious, but sometimes I worry that I still am those things. I have learnt that compliments can be a terrible thing. Often, with my artwork, it is those with little art experience who supply the most far-fetched compliments and those whose skills far surpass my own who are the most critical. I realise now, the harm of a hollow compliment.
I sometimes feel like a rotten seed, planted in the most nutrient-rich of soils, and watered constantly, but yet yielding no sign of growth. I am receiving a fantastic art education and am constantly immersed in the midst of incredibly talented people but yet I am just simply not developing my skills as I would like to. I am really angry at myself for this fact.
I wonder, sometimes, if a career in game art is what I really want.
Part of me is pulled towards travel photography and travel painting but I can't see how either of these dreams are possible. I like the idea of being a game artist but I am not an indoors person and the idea of being tethered to a desk is a terrifying prospect. Perhaps one day game art will be more physically involved, once virtual reality has formed an integral role in society.
My other problem is in the fact that it is debatable as to how much art there really is in commercial art. I don't want to paint or 3D model the same, boring, cliché shit day-in-day-out simply because it brings in the big bucks. I want to be an artist, not a prostitute to the visual senses.
It is often said that the 'free' in freelance is an inaccurate description of what the word encompasses but yet, I love the idea of not being tied down to anyone or anything. It would be amazing to travel the world, going from country to country, and capturing beauties unseen to the Western-world; similar to as the orientalists did. I feel that there is so much out there that surpasses the knowledge of my inexperienced mind.
I would be hard-pressed, however, to manage pulling-off such a feat.
I'm thinking of spending this coming Summer in a third world country doing humanitarian work. I'm currently looking into working in an orphanage in India, among other similar opportunities. Doing as such would hopefully lessen my feelings of self-contempt and anger at how little I've contributed to the world. It would also enable me to see a new part of this fascinating planet and experience a new culture, all of which I could capture and further appreciate through sketching, painting and photography. I think that doing this is a must to further my development as an artist and to ease the degree of disgust I feel whenever I see the reflection in my mirror of a middle-class Westerner who has had an easy life but yet done nothing to ease the suffering of others.
The bottom-line is that I don't know what I want anymore. I have fallen into a hole in which I can see nothing. I need to find a way of escape, so as to reclaim a state of clarity within my mind.
I realise how pathetic I sound right now.
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