The Artist I Put Away

I am angry at myself. Not in a dramatic way. Just… quietly. Constantly.
Because I can draw.
I know I can. Every so often I come across something I did years ago and it stops me. I look at it properly and think, that’s actually good. Then I realise I did it… and that’s the strange part. I don’t feel connected to it. It feels like it came from someone else.
And then comes the question I never quite escape.
Why didn’t I keep going?
I grew up around art. Both my parents were artists. Oils, landscapes, wild places. There was talent everywhere… and chaos right alongside it. Arguments, affairs, anger, the kind of atmosphere that sits heavy in a house and never really lifts.
When they separated, it was relief and damage all at once. It didn’t fix anything. It just broke things in a different way.
But through all of it, there was still art.
One of my siblings went into music but as hobby.
One became a professional artist.
The rest of us just… found our way however we could.
When I was about five, I drew a picture of a colt. Horses were everything to me. We had two, and they were the one steady thing in my world.
I showed the drawing.
My father looked at it and told me I was going to be an artist.
My mother took that same drawing from him, called it rubbish, scrunched it up, and threw it in the bin.
Same moment. Same piece of paper.
That was the line, whether I realised it then or not. Her voice counted above everyone’s.
I ended up with my grandparents. They meant well, they truly did, but to them art was a hobby. Not a life. Not something you build yourself on. They had already “failed” once with my mother and they were not going to risk that again.
Later, when I wanted to go to art college, I was told to do something I would actually be good at. By then my father was gone, so there was no one to balance that voice.
So I listened.
I put it away.
The drawing stopped. Or rather, it became something hidden. Something I did quietly, without weight, without direction. And when it came time to choose a path, I chose anything but that.
I failed at a lot of things.
And somehow, through all of that, I still ended up back in art… just not as the artist.
I work in it. I teach it. I guide people through it. Marketing, presentation, selling, building something real from their work. I understand the structure of it, probably more than most. People come to me for answers. I help them build what they want.
I stand in the middle of it every day.
But I don’t step into it myself.
Somewhere along the way I stopped calling myself an artist. Not consciously. Just… quietly. Replaced it with things that felt more solid. More acceptable. More certain.
Marketing.
Websites.
Teaching.
Useful things. Safe things.
I did some original oils, some sketches, but not often and none for a long time…. Because underneath all of that career success, nothing has really changed.
I am still that five-year-old, holding up a drawing, waiting to see which voice wins.
The one that says this is good.
Or the one that says this is nothing.
And if I’m being honest… I’ve spent most of my life listening to the wrong one.
So no, I’m not angry because I failed.
I’m angry because I stepped back when I shouldn’t have.
And maybe that’s the part that matters now.
Because I can still draw.
That hasn’t gone anywhere.
I just… stopped choosing it.

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