Susan Watkins -- Visual Art as Epic Poetry

(Topic of Choice #2)

I have loved to draw since middle school. It began then with doodles in the anime-style of Sailor Moon and Pokemon, mostly as a means to the end of writing little stories and describing characters to my friends. I was pretty bad, to be blunt-- but over time my eye became more discerning and my process more refined. My anime images ended up fair but by the time I really had enough skill to produce decent work I was tired of the genre. Sometime while I was in high school I decided to try lifelike portraits of famous actors and fell in love with the raw amount of time and detail that goes into that kind of work. Since then I've worked primarily in that subject, although I find now that friends are far more interesting than strangers. That shift from actors to people I actually know is probably responsible for a beautiful experience I had this semester.

I finished a piece in March entitled "Tulkas," a portrait of my friend Caleb with a title derived from one of Tolkien's characters. When I posted the image on a novice art site, here was a little blurb I wrote about the process:

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, I feel like art must be at the very least akin to epic poetry. [And, being as I am in the middle of a class about them, I know it's safe to say that Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield and their contemporaries would strongly concur.] My newest piece, "Tulkas," is the embodiment and expression of more raw emotion than I care to mention. I'm very, very pleased with it because I think that... it is hands-down the most fluid portrait I've ever produced. Furthermore... the creative process was, I think, more pure. I was really lost in this image the whole time I worked on it, and it has become something really immensely close to my heart."

While my past two or three pieces have drawn nearer and nearer, this drawing was really the first time I've experienced true ritual through art. As I pored over the details of the image and of my friend, I was not only "drawing" but actually engaging with him in a new way and coming to love him better. The process deepend and altered my perception of him, revealing and affirming truths about him that I had never been able to put into words. I thought differently about him after I was done than I had when I began, and now when I look at the image again I'm struck afresh by the revelation which had to come through art and did not at first come straight through him. It's an amazing and humbling process.