Artwork and story from Karen Sutherland
As a child, I dreamed of a life in art. In my twenties, I realized that I simply could not make that dream happen. For the next forty years, I built a successful career—it paid the bills but was never chosen from the heart.
At 65, I retired, and for the first time I had the freedom to return to the dream I had set aside so many years before. The last six years have been the best years of my life. Every day, I wake up eager to explore, learn, experiment, and create. I finally feel that I am becoming the person I was meant to be.
Art is no longer a hobby or something I do in my spare time. It is at the center of my life. It gives me purpose, curiosity, challenge, and joy. I love being in “the zone,” where time has no meaning. Art allows me to express things that I cannot always put into words.
After spending so many years in a career that was separate from my creative self, making art has given me the opportunity to reconnect with a part of myself that I thought I had lost. I don’t simply want to make pictures—I want to keep discovering how to see, understand, and translate the world through art.
My greatest challenge is that I am largely self-taught. I have spent the last six years passionately learning, experimenting, and practicing, but I know there are gaps in my understanding that I cannot always identify for myself.
I especially struggle with seeing and drawing accurately. Age-related changes in my vision have added another dimension to that challenge. Cataract surgery dramatically changed the way I see, and it has made me even more aware of how much I, as an artist, depend on careful observation.
I want to move beyond simply practicing more. I want to understand why something works—or doesn’t work—and develop the technical skills to express what I see with greater accuracy and confidence.
What I find most appealing about Drawing Academy is its emphasis on learning the fundamentals and understanding the reasons behind what we see. That is exactly what I am looking for at this stage of my artistic journey.
I have spent six years teaching myself through observation, practice, experimentation, and study. That process has been exciting and rewarding, but I have reached a point where I know that enthusiasm alone is not enough. I want to build a stronger foundation and learn from an organized, disciplined approach.
I am especially drawn to the idea of learning to see more accurately—not just copying what is in front of me, but understanding proportion, structure, perspective, light, and form. I believe those skills would transform not only my drawing, but everything I create as an artist.
I want to win because I am deeply committed to becoming a better artist, and I know that this course could help me make a significant leap forward.
I am not looking for a shortcut or simply a way to produce better drawings. I want to understand the underlying principles of drawing so that I can continue learning independently with greater direction and confidence.
At 71, I also understand that time is precious. I spent forty years putting my creative ambitions aside. I am grateful that I finally have the opportunity to pursue them, and I want to make the most of every year I have ahead of me.
Winning this course would give me something I cannot easily create for myself: knowledgeable instruction, structure, and feedback that could help me identify the gaps in my understanding and move beyond them.
I hope people will vote for me because my story is not simply about wanting to learn to draw. It is about finally having the courage and opportunity to pursue something I loved as a child.
For forty years, art was the dream I had put aside. At 65, I finally gave myself permission to return to it. These past six years have shown me how much I still want to learn and how deeply art matters to me.
I would approach this opportunity with gratitude, determination, and genuine enthusiasm. I would not take the course for granted. I would study, practice, question, make mistakes, and keep going.
I also hope my story might encourage someone else who may think it is too late. I have learned that a dream can wait for decades and still be waiting for you when you are ready. At this point in my life, I am not trying to become an artist because I think I have something left to prove. I am doing it because I finally know how much it means to me.
And I am just getting started.
