How My Niece Saved My Art
A post on art, love, dreams, and what my teenage niece has taught me
I was driving around a mountain when the thought crossed my mind. For the past few years, I’d been dealing with immense pain in my hands. It prevented me from working, and I was currently at a lucrative finance job that gave me more financial freedom than I’d ever experienced before. My parents moved in with me and relied on me financially, and I was in pain.
Prior to the pandemic and the hand pains that still have not gone away, I was hard at work every evening on my art portfolio. I was making comics, a pastime that, while time-consuming, improved my work. I was determined to build the life I always wanted as a freelance illustrator.
With the pain in my hands getting worse, it was becoming impossible to work my demanding and soulless job. I had to prioritize. Art, my oldest love, had to come second. My family was now first, and I stopped making art to rest my hands and focus on work. By then, I hadn’t made an art piece in over a year. I barely ever drew. My life was my finance work.
You could just stop, the thought said. You can just not be an artist anymore, and just be this person who works in finance. When I was a child, I announced I was an artist and that was that. No one told me I was talented. No one told me I was ‘destined’ to be this. I just worked hard day and night to draw and draw and draw. I chose art, and I was certain it chose me.
But in a year, I didn’t make anything. This troubled me. This meant it was possible for me to just not make art. I could just not be an artist. I could have a normal office job, rise up the ranks of being an underwriter, make good money, and have a decent life. I didn’t need art and it didn’t need me.
So I gave up on my dreams.
I want to start by saying this story has no ending. It’s still progressing. But had you told me on that drive, that moment when I determined my lifelong belief that I would cease to exist if I stopped creating was a lie, that my niece would heal those broken parts of me, I maybe wouldn’t believe you. I’d certainly have my doubts.
My niece always shows me her art. I always encourage her and her cousins. I didn’t have someone cheering me on, telling me I could be an artist. I was yelled at for reading too much, for not taking life seriously enough and escaping into the fantasy world art provided. No part of me wants to be that for my niece. No part of me can kill the dreams of the next generation. I could give up on me, but not on them.
It was during one of these conversations that my niece shared with me a page of drawings she did with a friend. I was curious about this since she’s home schooled, but she explained they drew together remotely through a website called Magma. To this day I don’t know how, but we decided to set aside a night to draw together.
For some reason, I was nervous. I never draw, how was I going to draw with my niece? Despite being only 16, she’s a bit of a critic. She once asked to see some of my work and when I showed her some of my headshots she replied, “Wow, you draw a lot of the same face.” I refused to show her any more of my work then. She was 10.
We opened the app and she immediately got to work. I asked her to give me a prompt, and she quickly said, “D&D.” I play Dungeons and Dragons with my nieces, and she asked that I draw her D&D character. And I did. And then some.
The results were clunky. I sketched simple things, portraits, and some slight anatomy studies (I couldn’t very well draw naked people with my niece). I did minimal coloring when asked while she set up a huge piece in full color. My anatomy was off, a stiffness stretching from my hands to my drawing. Her work is vivid and alive, expressive and silly. And all around our canvas, we commented on each other’s work, joking with each other, encouraging each other, and interacting with our drawings.
We’ve since done this often, setting aside nights to draw together. Slowly, carefully, my work unraveled. Slowly, carefully, I found the movements of an artist in my work.
When I was a teenager, I would meet up with my friends at their houses and have an ‘Awkward Drawing Session.’ We put on a Studio Ghibli film and drew for hours. There was little talking, and in the end, we shared our drawings. Most of these drawings were ideas for comics and novels that would never be written, but during these sessions, the ideas were pulsing with life. When we explained our drawings, we were breathing into the stories and making them real. We weren’t teenagers goofing off, we were creators.
As an adult, I no longer have these Awkward Drawing Sessions. I keep my ideas to myself, working on them quietly until my physical pains prevent me. My ideas do not pulse with teenage vivacity but exist as a graveyard of broken dreams. Only when I am sitting at home asking my niece to explain the characters she’s drawing am I reminded of those teen years.
She tells me about her comic characters, her ideas for D&D, and we argue about whether or not characters would let us kiss them (usually I’m the one left hanging). I show her my old D&D characters that I never play anymore, tell her their stories that were never explored through roleplay. With her, I brush the dust off these old ideas and bring them to life one more time.
I still don’t make art as often as I want, though I’ve tried in vain to make goals to get me to create. It’s only when I’m sitting with my niece, joking around and drawing tieflings and drows, that I find myself transformed into a hopeful teenager again, able to create endlessly because I truly believed I would die if I didn’t.
When I was a teenager, anything was possible. I envy that belief, that certainty that of course I’m going to live off my art and writing. Were I to go back, would I tell my younger self it’s useless, that her hands will hurt so much doctors won’t know what’s wrong with her? No, no. I’d tell her to keep going, keep creating, keep believing. You won’t cease to exist if you stop making art, but when you do stop, your sixteen-year-old niece will remind you once again how beautiful the creative life can be.
The other day I was sitting down with a new set of paints my family got me for Christmas. It almost seemed ludicrous. Why would you buy me paints? I can’t hold a spoon. The pack of over 100 paints beckoned me closer, and I set out to make swatches. Nothing more. Just swatches. Soon I found myself giggling. This paint is juicy! Look at this color! This color reminds me of these shoes. And in the evening, my niece texted me asking if we could draw together again.
This time, we shared characters from stories we were writing. She recently confessed to me an interest in becoming a DM in a D&D campaign, and her growing need to start writing stories for the characters she kept drawing. Like I do with art, I encourage her with writing. I tell her to keep dreaming, keep creating, and keep sketching. And suddenly, I’m a teenager again, watching a Studio Ghibli film and professing my newest comic idea to my childhood friend. But this time, my childhood friend is my kin, my niece whom I held as a baby and who somehow figuratively holds me. This time, my childhood friend is my teenage niece, who by simply being the eccentric teen that she is, has saved some part of me I thought was long gone.
Where do we find ourselves when we’ve lost the thing that once anchored us? Where do we turn when it seems the fabric of our being is destroyed? I don’t know everyone’s answer, but I know mine is sitting next to my teenage niece, laughing over our sketches of Mothman, discussing the alignments of D&D characters, and fighting over celebrity crushes. When did I lose the wonder of my teenage years? What would I do if I didn’t have my teenage niece to bring it back? I don’t know, and I don’t care. We’re here, we’re laughing, and we’re creating and creating and creating
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Every young person needs a cool and caring grownup who’s not a parent. It’s a wonderful, revitalizing role to play, as you’ve shown here. Mentorship works both ways. I wish you two many hours of happy exploration.
This was so beautiful. I’m so glad for the two of you, that you can share those moments.