Life is Expression

Artwork and story from Mark Wm Smith

I’m a lifetime learner now in my 60s. My current occupation uses those haphazard and motley life experiences that led to it, while giving me the opportunity to counsel others with a modicum of wisdom.

Art is at the center of the universe. The human experience of life is an expression of artistic ideas. Some people are simply more adept at sharing this reality. Art fills me with hope for humankind. It reveals our best self and recalls our capacity to empathize with the multitude of emotions from joy to grief to nostalgia to epiphany. Art keeps us moving toward light, when miscreants and despots would misappropriate the driving force of optimism.

Art has always eluded me. In my early years, I relied on talent, and as to artistic talent, I had none. As age and experience revealed my capacity to learn impossible things, I began to try my hand at different methods of learning artistic expression. The tools I developed quickly atrophied, leaving only a sketch on the wall or a digital file on the hard drive to commemorate the effort.

I long to consistently and accurately draw what I see in the world and from my imagination, able to consistently “portray the beauty and meaning of life.” I’ve considered the Drawing Academy for several years, unconvinced about the value of a classical art education. I signed on for many cheaper, quicker, easier plans to gain drawing skills. Each was substandard, short lived, or falsely promised.

I hope to win the Drawing Academy course as a way to encourage a personal commitment, since such a gift demands greater obligation to the giver.

People should vote for me only if they don’t have someone specific in mind to vote for. Not because I deserve to win. Simply to inspire growth in another who hopes to repay their kindness with an artistic expression of the human condition.

I want to win this Competition and I need your help!