Breaking psychological chains of oppression

This is all about breaking free of the barriers that were built around you.


I'll get right to it. Art. Expression.

I used to be one of those people who couldn't draw a stick figure earlier this year. A few months ago and for reasons i still don't understand, i bought a set of acrylic paints and a few brushes. I got home, and just dove in without even so much as a conscious thought about it. I started "doodling" with the paint and after mindlessly slinging paint around randomly i found myself in a sort of meditative, peaceful state. When i realized that just the activity in itself of moving the brush and making something that wasn't there a second ago, regardless if it was just random lines and shapes, i felt a release of my personal expression i've never quite felt before in other creative endeavors.

And then came anger, when i realized why i never knew how to express myself in this way, and why i had such a problem with art before. Something i remembered from either kindergarten or first grade, i can't quite place which, but it was around that time. Easter. For art class that day we were given glue, water, a sheet of heavy paper as a canvas and some strips of tissue paper. We were supposed to make an easter egg. I thought that was pretty lame, so as everyone else went along mushing some wadded strips of tissue paper crudely into an egg shape, i went to work straightening out all of my strips and gluing them into geometrical patterns that i thought were more creative than an easter egg.

My "art" was thrown away, i had to sit in the corner, and basically was excluded and told that i failed art that day. I remember how crushed i felt when they told me my art was wrong. I just remember feeling outcast, worthless, and confused at why the thing i created that was a reflection of my thoughts was so wrong. I remember before that though, i used to draw all kinds of stuff with crayons and also paint with those little kids watercolor paints. I know i did, but i can't remember a single thing i created as a kid besides my geometric "easter egg" that i was ostracized over.

When i realized just how much that one idiotic excuse for a teacher took away any desire i had to create anything visual, a lifetime of frustration of my inability to express myself came to the surface.

So i painted. I slung paint at the canvas with only one thought, that i'll not be told what to do this time around. I ended up with hours of time unaccounted for, swallowed by a million swirling flavors of anger and pain, worked it to tears, and through it i created something that i truly feel a connection to.

I don't like to show anyone my art, though not for reasons of insecurity, far from it now, but because it really doesn't matter what the hell anyone else thinks of it. I do it for myself and nobody else.

I did accidentally let some of my neighbors catch a glimpse of a piece when i tried unsuccessfully to sneak outside to look at it under natural light. That piece now hangs on display in a four star restaurant alongside "professional" art.

Now, i paint, draw in pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, oil pastels, and lately have been using photoshop to bring my sketches to life. I'm eventually going to explore as many different ways to create visual art as i can, but at least now i know that i can express myself in visual ways.

Now it's your turn. What chains have you cast off?

It is amazing to be honest.


I've done similar things with colored ink pens and drawing.

As you mentioned, it's very cathARTic.

What I did was fast sketches of things that inspired me...

From my Bottle of scotch to the buildings down the road from me.

I definitely encourage anyone to pick up the first implement of art they can find and spend a good hour or two with themselves, exploring.

ï'd like to express my self with short written stories, sometimes i'd churn out a couple a month and other times it's quiet for months on end, like now. But yeah, the written word is my area of happiness when i got sneezed on by a muse and pieces of inspiration stick on me. . I do not know the way the piece will go when i start it by the way so it's pretty funny how that comes together.

reply to post by DezertSkies


What I take from your Thread DS is the absolutly enormous impact teachers and adults can have on children. It should be stressed constantly to students embarkin in education that they as teachers can affect their students on a grand scale. I taught for a year and quit because I realized this and in no way wanted to sholder that responsibility.

I had a very similar experience with art in school as a child but my grandmother told me that teachers are fools and I believed her and followed my own aesthetic path. My grandmother also instilled in me an absolute distain for authority figures, which I cherish to this day. Another example of how profoundly adults can influence children. Also another reason I never wanted kids and forced my Dr. to vasectomize me at an early age.

I'm glad you eventually found a path of self expression. It's what seperates us from the beasts. I am blessed to have been a professional artisan for 30 years and learned early on that art/craft is process oriented not product.

congratulations on showing your work!!









[edit on 10-8-2009 by whaaa]

reply to post by DezertSkies


I am glad for you that you were able to finally release that negativity. And how cool for your artwork to be hanging in a classy place. I bought some paints and brushes a few weeks ago. I love to paint but I don't pretend to have any skill. I wish I did.

I was in a school play in kindergarden. It was Goldilocks and The Three Bears. I was Baby Bear. My mother told me later that I embarassed her in front of the other parents.

I knew everyone's lines and coached them when they got confused. All I remember is that the play was important to me and I wanted everyone to get it right for the parents so they would be proud of us.

In the seventh grade I wanted to take French but was told I wasn't smart enough. I was a transfer from another school and my grades were consistently in the top tier but they said I didn't have the potential. Years later, I became an interpreter. So there!

Schools just want to turn out mass produced minds. They have no time or interest in individuality or creativity.

Originally posted by Hazelnut
Schools just want to turn out mass produced minds. They have no time or interest in individuality or creativity.

Precisely H.

Another reason I bailed on teaching; and I was teaching in a JC.

The deal is; teaching is not very respected as a profession, it doesn't pay very well, therefore many teachers pretend to teach because we pretend to respect and pay them.

Teachers are so overburdened with class size and administration BS that
their excitement of being an educator is soon dashed on the rock of reality. No child left behind...............right

Topic.....Teachers Don't want to be an instrument of oppression but the system morphs them into glorified babysitters.
Most of my contemporaries in the art/craft world are ex teachers. The system forced the talented dedicated artist to seek their own path because of the intellectual constipation found in school systems. What do you expect when school systems are administrated by bureaucratic corporate goons rather than educators. It's about money.

[edit on 10-8-2009 by whaaa]

"Teachers" do have a subconscious psychological impact on students. I CONSTANTLY have people tell me i should be a teacher, even college professors have suggested it. I've never even so much as had a conscious thought of the act of teaching, but i constantly fall into that role in whatever i do.

In college i took a network class and on the first day of lecture i found out my instructor knew about 1/4 as much about networks as i already did. I ended up with 90% of that class time for lecture while my teacher sat, scribbled notes, and asked questions. Most in the class continued on to their MCSE network certification immediately following "my" class. As far as formal teaching, that's my only experience.

At almost every job i've ever had i end up being the one demonstrating skills and technique, and i see the effect it has on people.

And as for the barrier of artistic expression, i think what helped bring it to my attention was the contrast between art and everything else. I noticed there was something odd in the way that i could express myself in every way but with visual art. I can wield words like weapons, since i could read and write i've been writing songs and poetry. I'd feel perfectly fine about battle rapping any emcee i run across, I can absolutely and perfectly express myself with my skateboard or on a bike. I express myself in food as art. I work as a fine dining cook/chef which is a highly technical team art with several artists contributing to each plate.

And technical stuff, easy. Before the apocalypse (i consider y2k my personal "doomsday") i was on my way to aerospace school and was eventually planning on pursuing some education along the lines of astrophysics, celestial mechanics and quantum/particle physics. Seeing the events of the world and where we had taken a turn towards as a whole planet, i decided that i didn't want to be part of the whole entire thing.

I used to play guitar before i cut my fingers off too many times and although struggling with the physical limitations of fingers too fat to even fit on the fretboard, i figured out ways to play what i wanted to play.

But art, like i said, it puzzled me how i could do EVERYTHING but that, until i realized just how much of a negative impact that one experience had on me.

And what's really sad is that i see it happening to the kids, the same kind of repression in them. Since i skate, and spend lots of time at the skatepark, almost all my social interaction is with kids from 4 or 5 up to about age 15. There's one kid, 14, who somehow didn't get programmed like the rest, and all he does is express himself constantly. The rest of the kids sit there like scared sheep with their heads down cowering in fear and repression, slaves to the programming.