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I am an artist. I smear color across canvases and delicately place twinkles in eyes. I lie to my viewers and imply a scene of three-dimsensional space on a two-dimensional canvas. With a simple stroke of my pencil, I make a face appear pleasant or annoyed. I have the power to impress my audience with fantasy or relate to them with reality. I am artist, but what does it mean? Let me describe a point of realization in my life. As I push my way through an overgrown field, I feel the sun on my shoulders. The crickets begin to sing their melody of "Taps." Their humming fills the silence, yet creates a silence of its own. Between unwanted weeds and insects lives a small community. An unspoken gathering occurs as a natural procedure. I feel like an intruder on this peaceful ground, yet I can share their silence. I am a philanthropist of sight. Soon I view implications of civilization. A small dirt path breaks the weeds into two separate hemispheres. I walk on the equator. I have the power to step to the right or to the left, and to taste a small world of fantasy. However, unfortunately, the movement in my feet continues without interruption. While passing, I reach out my hand and pick a wild flower. I have a chance to plunge into a world of fantasy, but reality's claws hold me back simply to observe this magical place. I attempt to take a small part of this precious world, but once I possess it, all the magic floats away from my fingertips. I continue to walk to my destination. I am a recorder of the unrecorded. With my art box in one hand and my sketchbook in the other, I reach a small wooden bridge. Below my feet, a lively creek sings and babbles to me. What a wonderful place to be! I am suspended between the innocent songs of fantasy and the reality in which I live. Immediately, I find comfort in sitting there. The sun, which was heating my back, is there no longer. It now plays with colors and shapes on the surface of the water. I filter the scene through my own perception and record it. Hopefully, my impression of this moment will speak to others who take the time to sit and observe. I continue until my light source ends and I tire. The artist translates reality into fantasy. The creek babbling beneath is fantasy. People preoccupied with reality continually walk across the bridge without second thoughts. It is the artist who takes the time to sit and observe. The artist feels the need to speak through smearing paints across a canvas, or delicately placing the twinkle in someone's eye. The artist lies to the viewer in her representation of space. Imagination does not emerge form reality alone. It develops from each person's persona, which filters what is given and presents what may be. The artist makes the impossible possible to other humans. An artist breaks the monotony of everyday life and from it, produces a mosaic. My purpose is to speak to others through visual images of emotion. I make the intangible tangible in various glimpses of life. I am an artist. I aspire to lure others to stop, look, and to sit next to me on the bridge. --Laura Prieto-Velasco |
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