obsessive

I don't really know what obsessive means as it pertains to drawing. It can't be about my art. Drawing or not drawing doesn't fundamentally interfere with my family life. I can do and think about many other things besides draw. I do function fairly well. But I wonder if maybe that would change if I stopped drawing completely. As it is I spend a lot of time on these small sheets of paper. It seems to keep me calm and feeling secure.

I don't ever feel they're finished and I am full of anxiety while they're in process. My practice is nervous self loathing and hallucinatory paranoia. And I'm always driving towards spiritual and emotional catharsis plus I like exploring intellectual paradigms with bite. When the tally is in I've spent a lot of hours on them. Does that qualify as obsessive?

I wonder if I can live without doing them. It's not like I go into an autistic freak out or anything clinical if deprived of pencil. But I collect them obsessively, like pennies on the ground that mustn't be passed by but be pocketed. I feel that way about pencils. I imagine the concentration camps of my family and wonder what I would give for a pencil. Probably my bread.

The drawing does relax me and I'd love to have a career making them. Make some money. But I can't find a gallery in Toronto to take on my work. That's what I obsess on. Am I any good? Why does no one want my work? What's wrong with me as a person. Why am I cursed? What did I do? How can I survive as an artist and hide from criticism. That's when I need help. My anxiety always eventually leads to feeling depressed.


I'm confused. I've been told to get out of Toronto and find a mentor by one of the most respected curators in North America. That Toronto will never work for me. Maybe it's true. I feel lost here.

And very alone. But now that I'm healing from the wounds of my early childhood and youth, I've finally found the love of drawing again so I know that even if no one ever finds my work I have this, I love to make it.