A Mother’s Love
Drawing and story from Amanda Bitting
I am a mother of seven children and an artist, muralist and art teacher. I have always loved to draw. My mother had natural talent and encouraged me by taking me to art classes, helping me enter art competitions and supporting me. She dreamed of us taking an art class together after I graduated high school but unfortunately cancer stole her away from us before we could realize that dream. While I was yet in high school my mother spoke with her friends and arranged for me to teach art to children, which I enjoyed very much. I have continued to teach art as well and create murals and illustrations. One of the greatest challenges I face as an artist and teacher, is that I miss having a teacher myself. Drawing to me is a way of living, of engaging with and loving life and sharing my delight with others. I don’t want to be a master of the universe or a slave to my passions blind to the beauty about me, but rather a lover of life and creation. I want to share this way of engaging with the world with others, but like a water pitcher must first be filled before it can be poured out, so too I must be taught so that I can teach. A long time dream of mine has been to attend an atelier so that I could learn the classical drawing techniques shared by generations of artists. That dream has not yet been realized and is complicated by my current responsibilities to my family as well as the cost. I am particularly interested in the techniques taught in Russian schools. I was chosen to attend the Governors School of the Arts summer program prior to my senior year of high school. I met a particularly talented fellow student whom I discovered was from Russia. The following summer, as a graduation present, my parents gifted me a trip to Germany with my high school German class. While visiting the medieval city of Rothenburg I met a couple of artists from Russia. I was walking through their art display when one of the artists spotted the sketchbook in my hand and asked to look at my drawings. He shared some tips with me which he illustrated by drawing my portrait. I have always held that memory near to my heart. I would love to win this drawing course because it would be the realization of a dream I have kept for a long time like a buried treasure. It would also be an act of gratitude towards my parents who invested in me when I was a young and a way to help me pay that gift forward to my own children, and the children I teach. The mission of the Drawing Academy to keep this tradition of classical drawing alive by sharing it and passing it along to the next generation is not only near to my heart but a cause I believe to be of vital importance to the future of humanity. While I appreciate the technological advances which could make it possible to me to receive an excellent education in the comfort of my own home, I also am aware that the way we live in this technologically advanced society threatens our engagement with reality and loving participation in it, either seeking to conquer the created world for our own self promotion or otherwise becoming subject to its power, losing our powers of concentration to a distracted and superficial way of living. That is why I am particularly glad that the drawing academy emphasizes drawing from life, engaging with reality as it is, rather than from images or photographs which are an abstraction. As a tribute to my mother I am submitting a portrait I made of her.
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