Dalzey

When I was a young child, I picked up arts and crafts as a way to cope with boredom. As my three siblings were much older than me, I had to be resourceful when it came to entertaining myself. I remember tracing my favourite cartoon characters from Courage and Cowardly Dog, the Powerpuff Girls and Teen Titans, starry-eyed and excited by the prospect of one day being so good at art that I could conjure my own characters from imagination. With my small collection of DIY materials, I was always looking for opportunities to make things. I vividly remember crafting cards for teachers and classmates, this one time crouching on the floor for hours, perfecting a pop-up mechanism for a birthday card. I was so intensely focused, I had completely forgotten to eat or drink, my poor mother had to nurse me back from a headache so bad, I still remember it to this day!

Once I started taking art seriously as a hobby, I got myself some basic art supplies and instructional books on realism, which taught me foundational techniques and anatomy. By the time I became a teenager, I had expanded beyond the precision of pencils and markers, embracing watercolour as a cheap and accessible medium. Unrestricted by colour choice or movement, watercolour allowed me to paint more expressively. This coincided with my discovery of music, with its ability to encapsulate complex themes and emotions that continue to inspire me to this day. As I became more confident, I began sharing my work on Instagram, where I received positive feedback for the first time and began considering myself an ‘artist’.

Following my productive years as a teen, I suffered severe creative burnout, prompted by a mixture of stress, deteriorating mental health and an onslaught of social media platforms. I pressured myself into creating ‘finished art products’ that were 100% polished, unique and in line with my expectations. The self-imposed pressure of being an ‘artist’ slowly sapped away my passion, resulting in my decision to delete my art account, which over time felt like it was being hijacked by an imposter.

Within these many quiet years, art came back to me in short, inspired bursts, daring me to reclaim it, not as a stifling identity but an intrinsic, almost childish need to discover, explore and connect. To find my way back to creating again, I had to shed the pressure and fear of being the perfect ‘artist’, whatever it meant to me. Looking back to my earlier days as a child, it was so simple – I think I was most like an artist then, despite my lack of skills or recognition, because I created freely and fearlessly.

These days in an ongoing attempt to reconnect with my long lost creativity, I have been embracing the light-hearted and DIY attitude I once had, finding myself drawn once again to different mediums and textures, using unconventional materials like recycling, plants and even my own hair! I have even taken a break from watercolour, a medium I once found so much freedom in, to focus on doodling and scrapbooking, outlets that used to feel juvenile for the flaw of not being ‘marketable’ or ‘finished’.

To prevent my all-too-logical self from depriving me of a creative outlet ever again, I’ve promised myself to keep remembering who it is I’m really creating for – the little one that was so eager to learn, explore and create just for the sake of it.

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