About the Art: Cosmic Sundae

Update 2017/05/21: Changed post title from “Art Archive Series Part 1: Cosmic Sundae” to “About the Art: Cosmic Sundae”

I really like posting about a new artwork and telling the story behind it, and I feel like the artworks I’ve done previously could use the same treatment. So, I’m starting a 19-part series of blog posts about the Soulprints I’ve created in the past that I haven’t written about. And what better way to start than with the artwork that started it all: Cosmic Sundae.

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know I’m chronically ill, and the biggest hurdle with my particular illnesses is that I have a fraction of the energy level that most people have. This makes regular everyday living quite difficult, and for many years I could barely leave the house. Since I couldn’t use my IT degree outside of the home, I had to find something to occupy my time. So, I turned to art.

I doodled a lot in high school. I tended toward drawing simple shapes (circles, squares) and filling them with abstract shapes and lines, like isobars on a weather map indicating wind strength. The truth that I couldn’t admit to myself is that I had always wanted to be an artist, and just never thought I could be one. I thought it was something that either you were born with or you weren’t, and comparing my drawing skills to my friends in high school, I clearly wasn’t born with it. So no matter how badly I wanted to be an artist, it was outside of my reach.

That didn’t stop me from drawing, though, since I loved it so much. I sketched and doodled a lot, trying out different styles, but it was clearly just amateur work without focus. And I wasn’t really trying for anything more, since I thought it wasn’t in the cards for me anyway.

Then one afternoon in 2006 I was sitting at my table drawing without purpose, and I saw that what I had drawn so far was taking on the vague shape of an ice cream sundae dish, so I decided to work toward that idea, adding things to indicate dripping ice cream and waffle cone wedges.

This was my first full-fledged artwork. It was a strange experience. On one hand, I was so immensely proud of myself for what I had created, and on the other, it took me a long time to even acknowledge it WAS an actual work of art. And now, after I’ve grown as an artist and the works I create now are somewhat different and are way more refined, how do I explain that even with Cosmic Sundae’s flaws, all of which I see, I still feel that it’s perfect? I know Cosmic Sundae isn’t one of my most loved artworks. I understand. It’s raw and it’s random. But I think it’s perfect. And it started me on my journey, so it will always be special to me.