Why I make Art

There’s one word I use so often, it’s probably driving everyone around me a little bit mad.

It’s not please.

(It’s definitely not sorry.)

It’s why.

From the simplest “why have I never seen aliens?” to “why do you text me every time I think of you?”

Why this, why that...honestly, I even annoy myself sometimes.

But I can’t help it.

My years in Law School only added fuel to a fire that was already there; a big, blazing WHY I carried by my temperament, by my upbringing, by the way school taught me to see the world.

The reason I ask WHY so often is this:

Curiosity.

The urge to understand.

To connect the dots.

To make meaning wherever I can.

And when the time came to answer one of the most fundamental WHYs in my life —

Why do I make art?

curiosity was one of the first words that came to mind.

Curiosity about the nature of materials, the energy that each color brings out, the impact of an artwork in a space.

The second word that came to my mind was fear.

Fear that I’m here, in this world (btw still not knowing why), and that life might slip through my fingers.

I make art because I’m scared of the moment I’ll take my last breath, and I want to know I’ve left something behind.

Because when I take a raw material and shape it into something that didn’t exist before, I feel, if only for a second, invincible.

I feel like something of me might remain.

But the final WHY in why I make art

has nothing to do with fear. Or curiosity.

It has to do with love.

Love for one material over another, for its texture, its temperature, its weight, its resilience.

Love for the way one color leans into another, when they clash, but also when they complete each other.

For a form I can’t explain, but something in me remembers it. Recognizes it.

Like a dream I’ve half-forgotten.

The process of making art, for me, is not neutral.

There’s always a desire. A pull toward something. 

I don’t make art because I can. I make art because I fall in love with something:

a color, an idea, a reflection, a silence.

This is my way of being here.

And of leaving a trace.