Narrative

There we all were. Sitting there in our little cult of a circle laughing about some random cliché or another. Paint brushes stroked delicately through paint to create pictures of whatever they desired while others scribbled furiously with a pencil to detail the latest graphite sketch. Others even had their own little tablet and laptop. The humming of the machine was however drowned out by the songs playing through an amped up ipod but mostly everything was drowned from the laughter and chatter amongst the people. This was life.

                             And here I sat, here I stayed. Lodged between different friends every time I came and exchanged stories and smiles. It was, one of my many homes but it was one it was a home I was always homesick for. I’m not sure why I was always homesick for this home of mine either. I didn’t really see or hear from the people outside of our little circle, but this little circle was special. We were all different in both personality and art style, and our own differences brought us together to admire our own little personalities that made everything unique. It was a little flame flickering within a harsh winter in my life, or well all of our lives as we each helped each other.

                             Some days one girl around my age would tell about her troubles in a particular terminated relationship. Another day someone else a few years older than myself would go on about the struggles of college.  It was as if all of the world burst into our tiny room of pillows and pounded all of life’s problems on us. Eventually all of these problems would dissolve as time went on by, but there was always one that persisted to remove itself from our society. Art. The one thing that all of us within the circle clung onto is what caused us agony. Every week we would hear from a friend of the struggles to sell art within the city.

                             Art all over the world has always had its problems yes, but the struggles vary from place to place. Sometimes it is hard to sell art when the area is full of people incapable to fund for it or the culture isn’t too keen on holding an artistic interest of art. For something that inflicts everyone’s lives daily whether it be a public garden’s sculpture, an ad on the highway, or even the cartoon your kid is watching it gets little recognition and almost everyone struggles. Where I live we are known to be an artistic culture as well as a fishing town. Art for the most part does not have as much of a struggle here unlike other towns as we do have tourism to support our artisans. I can attest to this as I have seen many artistic things sold, but everything sold is all the same. Fish. Fish sculptures, fish paintings, paintings of docks and harbors and basically… just nautical things. That is all that sells in my town. We are stereotyped to be a fishing town and therefore all we can sell is that regarding fish.

                             Yet here in my circle of artists none of us paint fish. Sometimes we paint mermaids but those usually don’t sell as well. We are all young, inspiring, amazing, growing artists and none of us really can sell. Our hands will be bounded by the tourists if they aren’t already. We are locked up, a glowing flame in the blizzard with an extremely high chance of flickering out like so many others. This is why so many of us in the circle want to go away and be free, but we are locked in a dilemma that exists not only in our small town but everywhere.

                             It is a fight that only some will win. A current going one way and all of us fighting against it with all our might to get to the end of the stream to die in piece. Artists are like salmon in that way. Some of us give up because in reality it can be too much. A friend of mine, one of the few kids I saw on a daily basis outside our little home of artists, decided against a life of the arts because of pressure to have stability. She was a really good artist too, and when I see her sitting in that circle I wonder if more of us will follow. I mean I don’t draw or paint pretty landscapes of my town that have to do with fish. Surely that means I am to sink, but I still attempt to swim against the currently in light of following the circle as we all try our best.

              There is a little store nearby that does however sell nautical paintings and other paintngs relating to the town for cheap. The store is popular but more importantly they ship in copies of pictures that are manufactured in china, and they end up selling more. The tourists eat them up while we all watch from the windows with disdain in our faces and scrunched in eyebrows. A lot of us tend to face our backs away from the window if we can. If not then we just focus on our own unique picture. Maybe one day the world will be ready to change us and to label us as the diverse community that we truly are instead of what the world identifies us with. We are not fish. We are unique and we are Gloucester.