I am the color yellow. Intense brightness slides across the rough canvas as I swipe the brush down. The smell of potential winds me as tight as a spring as I dip my brush into the oil. I find whatever is immediately before me becomes my essence and my soul’s genetic makeup at the instant. Indigo, burning orange, luminescent silver flicker past my sight as I prepare my next move, the queen can shift to numerous places before settling into her calling and so it is with my art. When I catch myself plummeting too deep into this rapture, I am forced to entice myself back into the present world which is just as extraordinary as the one I just left. That world was dreamy, surreal, and Romantic while this one is crisp, rough, and achingly beautiful.


Painting usually has this effect on me, and this is why I always find myself drawn back to it whenever I leave it for any amount of time. I am a modern Frankenstein when it comes down to ardor for knowledge, yet I am a bug near a fly-zapper when I come near art. I can be heading down Main Street to the bank and a splash of vibrant crimson catches my eye, and my body forgets its original purpose as it changes its course to investigate. On several occasions, the object of my notice has been a simple hand-knitted scarf or another trinket in a store’s display window, but that does not matter. The exhilaration comes from the journey that leads to the discovery, and I plan to carry on my ardent learning about creation, colors, and chemistry with me to college.


Tempestuous and alive, I watch a horse tear across a pastoral meadow, blurring into oneness of the moment. The world is presented to me in chunks of simultaneous representation, always a different angle; a novel perspective. A lather works up on the stallion’s coarse hide as he bucks, flinging the froth into the air, letting the sun shatter it into thousands of multicolored crystals. I become the horse, as I am the sweat and the energy of the instant. I set the pencil down and start another drawing, for the horse deserved to decide its own path and if I kept drawing I would restrict its passionate freedom.


I am positive Bates College is already replete with entrepreneurs, athletes, writers, scientists, artists, musicians, mathematicians, extraordinary people, average people, and the occasional nut job…yet I feel safe in daring to say that you haven’t yet accepted a vivacious young woman who is the color yellow and a liberally sweaty horse.