Portrait of the Heart

I like to think of myself as an artist, but can’t yet confidently refer to myself as one.

I’ve tried a number of different mediums over the years, but I’ve never been able to capture what I’m really trying to depict, which is true human emotion, the actual experience of being alive, of being in love. It’s not an easy thing to do, it’s hard to get even a morsel of investment out of the reader or viewer, not to mention the same investment they have in their real life. As far as I know, nobody has perfected it.

I’ve tried painting portraits of all kinds, with pastels, acrylics, or watercolors, sometimes with the most realistic proportions I could manage, sometimes with abstracts and bright colors. I would paint only one person of course. But even if I painted the background with star studded night sky blues, I didn’t feel as if I was really standing with him in the cold November air. Even if I covered the canvas with angry crimson reds, golden streaks of hope, black blotches of despair, I couldn’t make the viewer feel the same way I did. Hazel eyes and a cocky grin seemed hollow in a painting, all their subtlety lost.

I’ve tried writing, but there aren’t the proper words to describe anything, or maybe I just haven’t discovered them yet. Poetry, dialogue, prose, nothing seemed effective. With static, unchanging words, there was no way to depict the flaws of human memory, how every moment you forget something and remember something else. Words on a page can’t make the reader feel every step in the grass, or a joyful leap of the heart. They can’t throw the reader into a fiery pit, make them feel as if they’re really crashing and burning, and put them through the painstaking process of getting back up again. A reader won’t see the word ‘whisper’ and look over their shoulder for the sound.

I’ve tried photography, but a single wordless snapshot was the least immersive of all. Even with the most expensive camera equipment, the image still seemed terribly blurry, its meaning unclear. My most recent photo shoot was of a man in black, standing in a doorway, his eyes vacant and pupil-less, avoiding the viewer’s gaze. I showed it to a friend and asked her if she was in love with him, and didn’t she want to be just like him? She said the man was ugly.

I’ve tried to film videos, short live action movies in my backyard, poor attempts at animation, dramatic covers of my favorite songs. Surely this should have been the most immersive medium of all, if still limited to sight and sound. Yet even the highest frame rate wasn’t enough to show them what I meant. It was as if reality was warped by his very presence, as if the very fabric of the universe was bending around him and

just for a moment

the rules didn't apply.

At least for me.

And there I was, sitting in my room, surrounded by unused equipment and unfinished paintings, thinking that everything I created seemed bland and lifeless, wondering if Dr. Frankenstein was onto something when-

Suddenly, it was all over. In a split second, it was as if I was never in love at all.