Freedom by Kaylee

Freedom by Kaylee - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

I suppose the most important lesson I learned from any teacher came from one I had for just a day. It was a field trip for AP Studio. That day my peers and I were headed to a studio where we would study under Japanese artist, Tadashi Hayakawa. According to my usual teacher, he was a bit of an eccentric man. Due to a language barrier he would try to start a lesson and end up shouting “Freedom!” This is exactly what happened that day, and I was confused as to what he meant when he said it.

After his brief lesson we began working. We followed his typical painting style: grab a fruit or flower, stain the canvas with coffee, create a contour of your subject, and fill in the spaces as necessary to capture the essence of your subject. I chose a slice of a red bell pepper to work with. I splashed on coffee roughly in the shape of the pepper. As I was working on my contour I looked up and saw the artist at work.

Tadashi had started his own painting. I wondered if he had intended for us to see what he was doing as while our canvases were sitting flat on a table, his was propped up. From where I was I could see his subject was a flower. I was in awe at how his painting was as delicate as the flower itself. This was part of how he was capturing the essence of the flower. I looked at my pepper and immediately wondered how I could improve. In other words, I wondered how I could make it so my pepper looked like Tadashi had painted it, not me. In this moment I could feel the match striking in my head until the flame sizzled alive.

I understood what he meant by “Freedom!” It wasn’t a freedom to do as we please with our canvases. The lesson was meant to teach us to observe our thoughts and emotions and use their freedom to create two parts of our compositions. One part was the subject itself and how we observed its form, highlights, and shadows. The other part is how we capture the essence of ourselves. As I worked I could see why my lines were thick and my shading was heavy. This was a period of high stress for me as I was taking four other AP classes.

I took away from this experience the freedom Tadashi was talking about. This freedom was the freedom of my own thoughts, not in the sense that I can think whatever I want and not get in trouble for it, but in how I let everything I am thinking roam freely inside my head, like a herd of wild horses. It is now easier for me to separate facts and opinions in most situations. When I have a project to work on I lay out the facts in front of me, and I step outside myself to look in to see where my opinions, emotions, and background knowledge come into play. I then work with both parts to capture the essence of my subject and create a solid composition. This technique has made those long college essays much easier to write, and this lesson has been the most important to me because I work so well with a little chaos inside my head.