Recently, I’ve been trying to be less “precious” about using my hoard of art supplies. I don’t really have much squirreled away, but what I do have includes some interesting fossils from previous eras: stained watercolor paper from college, a stockpile of fractured drawing utensils of all kinds, even a few sparsely filled sketchbooks dating back to high school.

There was a moment in July—after spending painstaking hours on the details of a meticulous, perfectly-composed painting—when I was looking through my stash, wondering what to create next… and the thought struck me: all these supplies do me no good on a shelf. I don’t need to plan something perfect; creating anything will be better than letting these tools (and myself) languish, unused.

I know why I’ve let them accumulate. Like many kids who grew up with money anxieties, art supplies were like rare jewels. I’ve long held an obsession with the inherent potential in blank pages, new notebooks, and empty canvas; for almost as long, I’ve feared this potential, holding an iron grip on my self-control, knowing that $10 here and there really does add up, and thinking that I needed a “good enough reason” to use what I had. I was afraid of “waste,” and so I unconsciously wasted time and the opportunity to gain experience instead. (Why yes, I am a recovering perfectionist.)

But, these days, art is part of my living. It isn’t a luxury; it’s a life. Not only does it allow me to express myself, but it also allows me to eat. Everything I put into art has an official name now: investment. Moreover, the one who determines the return on my investment is… me! Through using the tools I have given myself!

Doing nothing is the worst thing I could do. So, why hesitate?

This thought process led to a burst of creation. I painted abstracts. I painted figures. I painted terrible works, mediocre works, commercial works, avant-garde works, and maybe even a good work or two. I often had three or four in simultaneous rotation, so I would never be stuck waiting for paint to dry, because I could pick up something else. It felt wonderful.

This post’s image is perhaps my favorite of these creations, and certainly the most personal. It is watercolor and colored pencil, only about 6” by 7”, and is based on a photo I took of myself in summer of 2017; this was when I had just started taking commissions, a year after being gifted my first oil painting supplies. Now, four years later, I look almost the same, but nearly every other aspect of my life has changed.

I had no aspirations for this as I was creating it. It was free to be another bit of bad art, but I kept liking where my hand led the brush. What began as a modest sketch kept growing until, hours later, I glowed with pride and recognition. With this painting, I reach back through the years between my current self and who I was, and give her a glimpse of what’s to come. Painting is an apt metaphor for the passage of time; layer after layer, we build ourselves up—highlighting this and obscuring that, refining details and smoothing edges—until we decide that, for the moment, this is who I think I am.