Does art have the power to save lives?

Feedback from Andrea Toro

Hi. I’m Andrea.. A Graphic Designer from Colombia. As a designer and a very sensitive human being, i seek up everything related to art, actually, Art’s my true love. Not that i don’t like to design tough but i find art more rewarding for personal growth, sometimes i see myself a lot inside the marketing field and i just feel like i’m always selling stuff people don’t need through my souless designs. Just a Tool.

That’s the problem, when art was a more active part of my designs and my life, back when i was at college, i enjoyed what i was, i felt home. But as the time went by, i just had to do what i was told to do, very fast, very straightforward, just to sell stuff and not because i felt like it, or if i liked it or not, or if i had a “gut feeling” that something was right or wrong, was and still is definitely not important.

So i got lost in a thing i enjoyed so much in the first place because it mixed art in a functional way. I must admit, i studied graphic design instead because i intended to mix art with something that was probably going to make me earn some money…. and you know what? i couldn’t be more dead. i’m a dead person 11 yrs later.

I started to lost basic drawing and painting skills as i was using all my time to practice the basic design skill sets that are never done, and yeah, right now i feel dead and inside a cage i myself built without knowing.

Why haven’t i done anything about it? well for years and years i’ve tried to stay current in the design field, studying, studying, learning new software… trying to find something that keeps my interest but no matter how i’ve tried…. nothing happens. So i got into a major depression and had to quit my job and right now i’m going to the psychologist to find some meaning in this big and messy knot i have inside my head and my soul. And through the sessions with her, i’ve concluded art’s what is missing left. Me creating something i call art. So my soul has been craving for it and i have just abandoned it too busy to make money which ironically never happened hahaha and have been struggling with money ever since i became a designer. That’s just probably because my heart was never there, i hate to sell something i don’t believe in. that’s for sure…. i hate to sell lies if people don’t know they are lies.

I’ve tried to make an effort and have started several times drawing or painting something but i immediately get frustrated by the fact that my hand and my soul are equally rusty, i don’t even draw or paint something that doesn’t disgust me. I feel like a rotten apple or a hopeless case for art. So what challenges do i have in art? Getting me out of this cage, quitting design or at least until i’m able to make them coexist harmoniously. I want to be able to make a career and finally be happy with it and with my self. SO i need art to rescue me… from me. 😛 i want to regain confidence, re learn things i don’t even remotely remember right now, rediscovering joy learning more about art, human history and me.

What do i want to learn in art? Everything about it! i don’t know if i would ever be able to call myself like that but i would like to call me an artist someday, not a designer anymore. I love everything art, also design but not it’s application into the marketing industry. that’s just pure evil… literally and i’m a bit traumatised by it.

Why do i want to win? Well, right now i’m definitely not able to pay for art classes myself and honestly because every time i browse and fantasise about quitting and just starting to learn art, reviewing art classes and schools, and making a drastic carreer switch, i always end up thinking about the web art academy. the paintings are just so beautiful!! they simply just take me to a happy place i want to belong to but i feel that i can’t.

So yeah, i can’t start by my own, i have realized that through the years and that’s why i want to win. I want to finally be happy with my life, doing what i like the most. And yeah, i also want to financially survive and i hope art helps instead of design 🙂 i really, really don’t want to keep working for people only interested in selling empty stuff to make people feel more empty at the end of the day.

People should vote for me because they finished up reading my epic huge entry!! 😀 hahah, just kidding…. well i hope they vote for me because i really need it and because i hope they can relate to my personal story, i hope they can relate with the constant struggle of not doing something you like day by day through the years. just feeling dead inside…. i hope they can relate to the fact that they were or also saved by art in a way, and later on i want to help rinse others problems away with my art hopefully… so yeah. Thank you, this is the first time i’m able to write this down and actually admit it to someone except my psychologist.

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