You don’t need to be good at art to call yourself an artist. My name is Ava Barrett, and I am an artist. I have been dancing at the tannery arts center for seven years. And I know what your thinking. What does dance have to do with these pictures I have painted? Well, dance is my main outlet for creativity. Recently I have been given fantastic opportunities to work with professional dancers to further my artistry. Within those seven years, I have seen tremendous growth in my body and mind, now onto the subject of painting. I took art classes as a kid but never really took them seriously until it became my elective freshman year.

When I paint, I tend to do portraits. I paint a figure or a face and paint the background however I like. However, in my art class, I was challenged to play with concepts. I had never done this before after coming up with an idea. I began to paint. As I saw my image coming together, I couldn’t help but get other meanings than what I wanted to show. I worried that what I wanted to say wouldn’t be clear as more ideas popped into my head of what this painting could mean. I realized that art is subjective. So why worry about what others will think? And this isn’t only in art. Dance is personal as well. What most people don’t know is most of us go through a process when choreographing. We ask ourselves: What do I want to say with this piece. Through that, we determine the quality of our movement and how it portrays that message. And it doesn’t need to be something profound to do this. We don’t need to worry about our art fitting into a specific category to be considered good. What makes us a good artist is our creativity and uniqueness. That is the one thing I have realized throughout my years as an artist. And I will continue to tell myself as I grow.