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Personal Narrative: My Current Art Class

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On the subject of pulling from life events and manifesting it into one’s art…*rubs hands together and manically cackles*
You asked the question, and now the floodgates have opened. Are you ready for this? Strap on a life vest, grab some floaties, brace yourself.

My artistic process, especially this past year, has really gotten off on cheap thrills, and confronting ugly aspects of myself. Equal parts sardonic, masochistic, yet cathartic. (Gone are the blissful, young days of “just because” creation.) Likewise, my work has progressively, and to its benefit, turned more and more personal. Gutting myself like a fish—purge, cleanse, purge, repeat until exhaustion— feels sickly satisfactory. The emotional weight and trauma I shelter, and shoulder, and stifle and feign its absolution, seeps into my work. Everything has a valve, a tap, a pressure gage and release. Expel, expel, expel. But the …show more content…
My current art class is really causing a psyche purge…but in a thrilling, less personal way. It makes me 100% nervous because there’s no direction; the creative exercises we perform are purely spontaneous/experimental in process which is both delightful and frustrating. I dig it though; it’s hella nice to not think for once, and just let my limbs run on autopilot. I’m also taking an English class which is a mix of creative writing, religious studies, and philosophy—the catching being that all students are all required to partake in a ritualistic practice to enrich our interior lives (e.g. meditation, yoga, hiking, centering prayer, journaling etc.). and I’m curious to see how this may potentially shift my creative outlets. I’m certain the pursuit will still come from the same cerebral or intellectual manifestations as all my personal filth does, but this philosophy class, I think, will jolt something out of me that isn’t so damn rooted in exorcising inner demons. Ideally, I won’t leave the class feeling like I spooned myself down to my

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