5:10am February 18, 2013

Oh wow.

I just had a dream that I was in some weird place. It was like a combination of an institution, a college (with dorm), and an art class. I had a roommate.

I don’t have the greatest history with art classes or with drawing or painting realistically or both. Most of my art that’s considered any good (and it is considered good enough that galleries have sought it out, just not truly Great Art) is what most people would call abstract. In art classes prior to adolescence, I was considered from mediocre to literally the worst student in the class. These were classes that have prized realistic art over other forms, and that have… not just not valued creativity, but actively devalued it except within specific circumstances. Having had more creativity than talent at realism, and having people unwilling to teach me to acquire that kind of talent in a way that I could learn it, I was never one of the Chosen Ones who got all the attention and access to the best materials and my work showcased for others to see. In fact, in my most traumatic classroom experience with art, the teacher painted my paintings for me out of impatience and told my parents it was me painting it. Meanwhile she screamed at me and made me feel like an idiot, and when I hid in the bathrooms she tried to make me feel like a criminal too.

It was only during adolescence that any art teacher thought my creativity was worth anything, but even that was sporadic and they still weren’t teaching me much that I could use. They did encourage me though. And this was art in general, but not realistic painting. And only a couple teachers really. The damage to my ideas of myself as an artist or even a potential artist had already been done.

Recently, a friend had been telling me that my attempts at even slight realism aren’t all that bad and could improve. And that some are really really good for a beginner. I started babbling evasively about my attempts being a waste of paint and she went “WTF there’s got to be more to this than wasting paint because you’re utterly terrified.”

And it became clear that my terror of doing much in the way of realistic painting is like a terror of death almost. And that this is tied to a deeper terror I have that I’m defective and worthless and so forth in a more general way. And then we left that conversation where it was.

So in this dream I had a roommate. And we were doing art for school or something. And we were both in the situation I’d sometimes been in in art classes both in and out of school – not the Chosen Ones and therefore not the people the teachers really taught how to do stuff.

But somehow. And the details are already getting crusty. My roommate got them to take us a little bit more seriously. Despite them still thinking of us as defective due to disability as well as lack of immediately apparent talent at the specific Chosen™ kinds of art they did.

And just before I woke up, I had begun to set up some preliminary sketches for a realistic painting, which weren’t bad at all.

And I woke up thinking maybe I’m not as defective as I think I am? Which doesn’t depend on my ability at realism. But my ability to ever give realistic painting a chance does seem to depend on thinking that I’m worth enough to try. And I’m wondering now, whether I’ll be able to try.

It also of course depends on getting past the idea that only the Chosen Ones can ever be any good, that you have to be a certain kind of good in childhood to acquire skill as an adult, and that skill always looks the same in all people and can be easily measured and quantified and you either have it or you don’t, and you especially don’t if you haven’t been a Chosen One or haven’t learned through the Proper Channels etc.

Of course this is kind of the story of my life. To put it in the terms of a certain fantasy series, the Aes Sedai (sort of a college of magic users) often look down upon wilders (people who’ve learned magic independently of the Aes Sedai, and often in idiosyncratic ways, although some later train with Aes Sedai). And that goes for lots of things besides magic, besides art even. And I’ve had the (mis)fortune to be a wilder in so many areas that I’ve been bound to upset a lot of the kind of Aes Sedai that get prejudiced or huffy about all the work they did (and I didn’t?!?!?!) and here’s someone claiming some degree of skill in that area without doing the exact kind of work that Aes Sedai do. (Never mind that being a wilder also means surviving a horrible illness that often kills you.) My learning style just seems to make me forced to be a wilder in a surprising number of areas (not magic, though), because the Aes Sedai style of learning doesn’t “take” even when I try it. And I think this has given me a sense of inferiority, no matter what I manage to accomplish, that doesn’t do me or anyone else any good.

Anyway. I don’t usually put a lot of stock in dreams, but sometimes I have one that seems to be a good sign. I hope this is one of them. I also hope I get the chance to practice actual realistic art again soon. And maybe the world won’t end, whether I get it right or wrong.

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