Aubrey said 10 years, 1 month ago:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with art. In my early teens, I decided to teach myself and I got to the point where I was starting to get noticed in little contests here and there. I still have a really, REALLY long way to go though.
But I’ve hit a wall.
Aside from the internet, I have no artist friends to talk to. I get no feedback from other artists, I have no art community to feed off of. I really wanted to step up and take some lessons, get to the nitty gritty…but my mom kept putting up roadblocks. I found THE cheapest art lessons, supplies included in the fee, and I even offered to pay for it (just barely over $100 which is an insanely good deal on lessons)…and she still made such a stink about it that I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
Then she turns right around and tells my brother, who is in college, that she will pay for all of his fencing expenses: tournament fees, gear, repairs, whatever he wants, she’ll pay.

I tried to ask about art schools. I poured over countless schools, comparing prices, tried to find the cheapest one with a program that I liked…Mom didn’t even look at the website, she just dismissed it right off as costing too much. I KNOW there are ways that I could significantly cut the price down but she just cut it off flat and I was pushed back to getting a regular ol’ degree that honestly, I don’t even want in the first place. Mom wanted me to go to college and she wouldn’t leave me alone until I did.

It’s not just the money though: there’s a lot of emotional baggage that goes with art. I’ve always had trouble making time for it because I’ve been the mini-mom in the household ever since I was little so I had to balance school (which always took me a long time because I was horrible at it) and my chores AND Mom’s chores. And I have to keep the peace between my parents. And whenever Mom gets frustrated, she comes to talk to me for hours and I can’t get anything done because then I’m rude if I don’t listen to her.
The only time I get to myself is after everyone goes to bed and my parents give me SO MUCH GRIEF over staying up late…but they don’t give me time to myself during the day.

My mom has also not been wholly comfortable with the idea that I wanted art to be my job, or even a part time job, and I think subconsciously she’s been trying to find a “normal” job for me ever since. She says art isn’t stable enough, that I’ll be poor.
The line that finally broke me was she told me that if I wasn’t selling any art, what is the point of doing art? The whole point is to make it my job but no one’s buying so I have to get a “real job”.

It has been a struggle. Ten years, I have worked towards being an artist but I’ve felt like I’ve hit a plateau recently because of being cut off from the artistic community and being saddled with so much guilt and parenting the rest of my family. I feel like my hands have been tied and I haven’t been allowed to progress.

Every time I try to draw, I get very tense and frustrated and there is no joy left in it anymore. All I keep hearing in my head is that art isn’t good enough and it hurts. I haven’t picked up a pencil in three months which is highly unusual for me.
Ten years of my life I have devoted to art and now I don’t want to have anything to do with it because it makes me angry.

I’ve tried to switch to writing but that’s also pretty depressing. I’ve been writing officially for four years now. It’s slow going though. I’ve tried submitting to a bunch of different contests/magazines but have been rejected, no luck whatsoever.

Without art, without writing, I feel like I’m just floating. I’ve always had a drive, a determination to fight through stuff, to win, to accomplish and achieve and now to realize I don’t really have anything to do feels very wrong. I’m a creative person and it feels like any artistic venture isn’t good enough. I don’t know what is good enough anymore.

I used to be a really happy person who took joy in every little detail of life. I used to have all this fight in me to go against the world and prove them wrong when they rained on my parade and told me a career in art wasn’t possible or took too much work or whatever.
Now I sit and don’t do much of anything and I’m beginning to believe them.

Aubrey said 10 years, 1 month ago:

Oh gosh thank you *hugs*

She would know in that I would have to use her car. I don’t have any means of getting to the lessons on my own.

I’ve been doing college online but the classes are getting harder now that I’m going into the last year, year and a half (depends if I can survive math! XD )

I did graphite pencil realism and my favorite subjects were owls, hawks, etc. I tried some watercolor but was having trouble with it. I really wanted to learn color and landscapes – both weak spots for me – and even though I had started to get the hang of portraits, I was still missing some key elements that I was hoping to get some expert tips on. I’m all for learning on my own but when I keep making the same mistakes over again, I know outside help is needed sometimes.

Rimiir Green said 10 years, 1 month ago:

Then don’t let her stop you. Tell her that if she can’t accept the fact that this is who you are, then so be it. If she isn’t going to be a good influence on you in your life, if she is just going to make you feel worse emotionally, and not better, then it is for the best to cut her off. Go stay with a friend, and find another way to make money, so you can take art classes. And temporarily feeling down about art, isn’t permanent. I’ve felt like I couldn’t be a photographer for a while, and it isn’t because of any body trying to stop me, but because I don’t feel like I’ll beable to get a ged, and get accepted into a good college to do it. But despite the fact I’ve felt like this for a year, and I don’t have a camera, it doesn’t mean this a permanent feeling. I’m starting to feel better about it, and sometimes I feel like I can’t write, but It isn’t anyones fault. I met a famous author, and they told me that sometimes you shouldn’t show anyone what you wrote until you’re done writing it. Which is true. Don’t let anyone get in the way of your dreams, people can and do make a living out of artsy stuff, (generalizing all things that have to do with art, such as drawing, and writing, and photography, etc) If she is a toxic family member, which it sounds like she is, then you need to cut off contact. I know it’s hard, since she’s your family, but sometimes it’s for the better, if they’re going to treat you badly. Like me. I’ll have to cut off contact from my mom once I can move out, because she’s emotionally abusive, and toxic.

And quit thinking in terms of “broken” Life isn’t about domination, and “breaking” other people. You aren’t broken, your just temporarily affected by what she said. You can bounce back though.