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When i was a kid, i got asked to produce a drawing that expressed Autumn, the winner got the work in a calendar for the school. I worked and i worked on this drawing, expressing my feelings of Autumn.

I won.

I told my Mum and Dad that they could buy the calendar with my work in it, i was so proud. I showed my parents my work, and although they were happy for me told me they that although it was good, my sister's new drawing of a bird was better... more realistic.

Through out all of my childhood and teenage years, i was told i was not as good as my sister and to this day i still do. I would constantly compare my work to hers, and eventually i gave up art completely. I had a pang of jealousy when i would see other peoples art work, and suppress the jealous feeling towards my sister and the anger i felt towards my parents.

I felt even more guilt and as i grew i built up this wall around myself, i put on a mask of a confident girl, who did not feel jealousy, sadness or frustration. I was there to make you feel better, to listen and to make you laugh. I though that if i expressed any other feelings it would show weakness and vulnerability and i convinced myself these were bad things, that i would let people down.

When my sister got ill and as i grew older i started to see the cracks in mental health in my parents i felt the need to be the stronger one, the rock that supports all of these things and return to art, to make them proud and to finish what my sister started.

I now see coming to college was the best thing i could have done, for myself and for no one else.

I have always been one of the best, but never the best. I am realising it is ok to feel things, to not be happy all the time, not to compare myself to other people, at college, work or in my family. That i can feel these things.

So i want to show my feelings, to have them really seen.

I don't feel good enough, i never have. I constantly get down on myself and what i produce, say and do. I always have and i think i just found the root of it. I started over thinking after a talk in class today about why i feel certain things and this just fell out on this page...

I need a way to express this in a way couldn't explain in full, with just words. To get it out of my head and to be seen and let myself be vulnerable.

But how? this is something i have struggled with for so long... so i decided to try and just put marks down with paint, that to me capture feeling...

Frustration... ?

Red, jagged energy. 

Covering it up, suppressing it 

After doing this its like a big weight off my chest! I feel the need to take this further, to keep going and then collage it together... i don't know if any of this makes sense, but i feel like i have just come across a huge break through in my work... we will see!