by Chrissy Linn

Created on: May 26, 2009

Writing an autobiography, so new an adult, seems premature. How much history worth telling can be stored into eighteen years? Not so much. Though I don't have as much life and travel experience as my peers and coworkers, my experiences with art have helped to shape me and have created a more driven "Me."

My interest in art started in the first few years of my life, even before attending kindergarten. Although I always liked to draw when I was a toddler (my childhood drawings still hang on the refrigerators of many of my mom's friends) I didn't know why I liked art, or that art could be the result of so many ideas. My grandmother, who lived with my mother and me, drew a series of pictures of me with Casper the Friendly Ghost. At the time, Casper was my favorite film. I loved how, with just a pencil, my grandma could create something so fun and realistic. Somehow, I could look at what was once a piece of lined paper and suddenly be gazing into an alternate reality where I could be wherever I asked my grandma to be, playing with whomever I wanted to be with. Trivial doodles were not so trivial anymore, and my imagination had sparked so brightly that it still hasn't burned out.

Once I was in elementary school, I excelled in every assignment that required creativity. The most enjoyable project that I remember from elementary school was a painting activity. Each of us chose a type of fish from a pile of pictures. I got the angel fish. We got to wear protective clothing and paint a replica of our fish on big easels. I stood in the middle of the classroom, in front of my easel, pushing the thick paintbrush against the big paper, and I don't think I stopped smiling the rest of the day. My fish looked like crap-with-fins, as I look back on it now, but I felt like an artist and I sequentially wanted to be an artist.

I didn't only like illustrated and painted art; I felt a true yearning to write. Writing essays and non-fiction was a disaster; I can't count the amount of times I wrote "I don't know" as answers to essay questions and daily journal questions; but I couldn't get enough of story-writing and poetry. In the same school year that I painted my angel fish, we got to write a small story and have it bound in a hardcover book. I didn't have to put any thought into how I would make it work. Other kids squirmed at the thought of having to think about their own story. A bunch of the books turned out to be similar to the end-result of my fish, total garbage. I on the

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>