with these hands

When I look at my hands I always remember what my eldest sister said, "Artist hands." Long, thin fingers, unmanicured. Scars on on finger, two moles on another. I like my hands. We used to have a family friend visit us on the Farm when I was younger. I remember her teaching me how to color. That is my earliest memory of liking art. When I grew up I always asked my parents to buy me coloring books and crayons. Crayolas and coloring books were there in place of dolls and dresses.

I was never a girly girl to begin with. So dolls still scare me to this day. Another cousin of mine, Kuya Steve, is a great artist. I remember when we visited in Manila I would go to his room just to look at the paintings on his walls and even on his ceiling. He made me draw a vase of flowers once but the Crayola coloring me just looked at the pencil and blank piece of paper like it was alien. I attempted to draw but it ended up looking like an abstract piece. It still makes me laugh when I think of that.

Highschool crept up and my parents no longer thought coloring books were appropriate for me. I got distracted by computer games but I still liked pastels and watercolors. One time though, a teacher wanted the whole class to draw him a horse. A horse. Not everyone in our class has seen a horse, they were all city kids. And even if I knew how a horse looked like I couldn't draw one to save my soul. A stick figure horse was unacceptable. But lo and behold, this one guy was an artist. So our classmates commissioned him to draw a horse for every one of us. He saved us all, with his artist hands and his horse.

I became really envious of him. Not that I wanted to save the class with horses. No, what I wanted was to have his artist hands so I wouldn't need someone to save me because they can conjure a horse on paper. So I started drawing again, and asked my parents to buy me sketchpads and pencils. My sister Darlene also encouraged me to draw since she was really good at drawing, coloring, painting...okay, she was good at all kinds of art. And I wanted to be an artist too, innate talent or no.

Fast forward years later, I have artist hands, after all. What I lacked was practice. And now that I stopped drawing, my art looks like stick figures again. I look at my hands now and know what they are capable of doing. I look at my hands and wish I can draw every single day. I seem to have lost my muse. I know that is not true, what I lost is my first love. Art is and will always be my first love. So now that I'm back to rank Amateur, all I can do is draw and draw and draw until art comes back to me. You accept art in whatever form because art will come to you however it wishes.