Art Saved My Life
How art helped me heal from trauma and people pleasing, and brought me back to myself.
Most of you know me as an artist and writer, but I am also an international award-winning, master’s level educated opera singer with a list of successful accolades behind me. You’d think, given this information, that I’d still be singing, or at the very least, still be performing. But what if I told you the very first award I ever won wasn’t for singing, but for fine art? In fact, there is antidotal evidence I was making art long before I was able to sing, and it’s super embarrassing!
My Nana, who passed away very suddenly when I was 2.5 years old, due to a glioblastoma, loved the world of art. She was a docent for a museum at one point in her life and even commissioned a local artist to create large paintings of herself and my mother and brother. She collected nudes and one of them usually hangs in my bathroom to signify, yeah, this is the naked place. Once, when I was very little and still in diapers, she was babysitting me and my older brother. When my mom returned home, she found a note to me from her mother. It reads:
Dear Liebers (my birth name is Leigh),
STOP THAT POOPIE FINGER PAINTING ON THE WALL!
Love, Nana
Apparently, I had been making art on the walls with what was available to me at the time. You get the idea. I was finger painting at the age of 2 with nature’s finest paint, like I HAD to express myself that second or I would burst!
I think about this moment often. What was I trying to express? Why was I so intent on making shitty art. And why did she write a note to me, barely a toddler, about my behavior when I wasn’t even potty trained yet? The cuteness of the nickname stuck with me for a long time after she was gone. Her sense of humor was pretty great from what I’ve been told. I have pictures of her up all around my house. In them she looks really serious and demure, like she wanted to show the world only one side of her - strong, powerful, resilient. And I believe she was, until she wasn’t. She became sick quickly and died quite young at 62. Did she know she was going to be gone soon when she wrote the note? Did she want to leave a message with me about cleanliness or just an inside joke between the two of us, one I wouldn’t understand until much later?
Sometimes I feel her with me, laughing beside me, making art with me, praying with me in a spiritual way when I’m in nature. I think I get my love of art and all the beautiful things in the world from her. She passed down quite a bit to my mom, and from her to me. Mom loves a good museum, or a good shopping trip. Fashion and art often go hand in hand for us, so we love a good trip to the shops. What I’m trying to say is, the life of an artist has always been inside of me, from the day I was born.
As a kid, I made a lot of art. Almost too much art. I could not keep my hands off of a ream of fresh white copy paper. Home computers became a thing while I was coming into adolescence, and I definitely took advantage of all that paper lying around. I made outfits for dolls. I created characters and wrote stories about them. I copied things from magazines and redrew them just to practice getting all the lines right. And in third grade, after moving from Alabama, where I took regular art classes, to Florida, I drew some seemingly random art in my elementary school art class with the theme My World in Colors, which my teacher submitted to a local kid’s art competition. I placed second in the Elementary division for my county, narrowly missing the first place and the ability for my art to be on a giant billboard in town. We drove by that billboard often and it would have been soooo cool! Even so, my art went up in the Orlando Museum of Art, and I have pictures of me in a gingham dress, standing next to my art on the wall, adorned with my sunhat and smile.
But when things got really bad at home after my Nana died, I became the kind of quiet kid that many with trauma are familiar with… the “high achieving, spends time alone in their room and doesn’t have any needs” kind of kid. That is around the same time I started performing. I began singing because my mom is a singer, and a really good one, too. I remember her teaching me to sing with vibrato by singing in the shower with me, helping me hear the echoes and trying to get me to relax enough to find them myself. I began singing more because it made other people happy. Every time I performed, I got praise and attention, one of the only times I did. This informed literally every decision I made from then on. I was a people pleaser, and I had found my talent.
Singing became my whole outside life, but behind my bedroom door I was painting, drawing, designing, doing anything I could with some markers, brushes and paper. Some of my favorite drawings include:
a fully designed clothing catalogue a la Delia’s, with branded jeans and stylized models
a fully realized story about vegetables who are all friends (my mom still claims Veggie Tales was my idea first)
faces of mod women I copied from a book I bought in New York City about 1960’s London fashion
a large fairy I hand taped together from multiple pages of printer paper
Looking back, it seems like drawing was the thing I enjoyed doing the most in my life, but I stopped doing it in high school and college. Was it because of the workload? Or the time commitment? Was it due to making so many friends I lost interest? Actually, none of these are the reason I stopped making art. I actually stopped because I was critiqued by my peers and told I wasn’t good at it. That I had to choose one thing to be good at and obviously the people around me told me I was best at singing. So, I stopped. Sure, I’d doodle every now and again, even drawing my Senior Year recital poster, but I was a singer and that was my focus.
Cut to several years later. I am now out of Florida and living in Texas, working as a professional opera singer and voice teacher. I was supposedly living the dream, but I was miserable. I decided to quit my career as a professional auditioner and shifted to making a living doing whatever made me money. Auditioning for Young Artist programs was not only very expensive, but it was also demoralizing. I would pay a lot of money to fly somewhere, book a hotel, and pay for a pianist, all for the judging panel to stop me in the middle of my first aria to tell me “thank you, next” like I was one of Arianna’s ex-boyfriends. Why did I even bother?
One day, at a particularly abusive YA program, I had enough and quit! I decided to continue singing for the professional chorus I had been a part of for half a decade and if any solo opportunities came up, I would consider them, but I would no longer audition. Of course, right when you quit is when you finally get offered roles! The irony was palpable. But of course, I had to say yes when I was offered a role at a local opera company I had been rejected from multiple times through the audition process, this time without having to audition at all. And the role? Amy in Mark Adamo’s Little Women, a role that was very challenging musically but very, very fun to portray! I got to go on stage and sing with some of my best friends, doing the thing I’d studied and worked so hard for, and it was a huge success. I was even on TV! The coolest part of all? Amy is an artist and the director asked me if I was comfortable drawing on stage in real time. “You don’t have to actually draw anything as no one will see it, but if you make real lines on the page, it will look real from the audience.” No one asked if I could draw, they just told me to do it! Have fun! No pressure! It was as if someone finally gave me permission to make art for the hell of it. That was the day I started drawing again, after almost a decade away from it.
Why is this moment important? It seems I could have picked back up a pen and paper at any point. Well, this happened to coincide with my one and only marriage. You know, the abusive one? My ex-husband had encouraged me to stop journalling and doodling soon after we met, probably so I couldn’t keep track of all the terrible things he did to me. And as a people pleaser, I obliged. I now know why I listened to him, probably something to do with the lack of self-confidence and the total enmeshment I was creating in this codependent relationship. But having the freedom to draw on stage gave me a secret place to make art. So, each night of rehearsal or performance I would go out on stage, sing my little heart out, and draw. I drew the audience, the actors with me, the stage scenery. Anything and everything I could think of, I drew. It was incredible!
This set me on a path of self-discovery. Of curiosity. The beginning of the next big thing. Once divorced, I kept drawing. It started as a means of therapy, drawing faces of women with quotes about empowerment, and then slowly morphing into comics about me and my cat. I even drew comics with my ex-husband for a short time, once he found out I could draw, but that was, you guessed it, traumatic. He watched every single stroke of pencil I made from over my shoulder, making comments about how it wasn’t perfect on the first draft. He had no idea how to sketch or compose a piece, so he was naive to think the first rough sketch would be close to the finished product. The entire thing made me feel awful and was a low point in my return to making art. This is the exact reason I had stopped!
Later on, once the divorce was finalized, drawing became a way to process my feelings, motivate myself, and create a narrative of healing, not pain and sadness. Now, eight years later, I find myself growing an art business, vending at events and selling my own originals to strangers who comment about the messages of hope and humor in my work. It feels like alignment. I feel seen. What started as something I only did for myself due to fear and judgement is now becoming a thing I openly share with the world. And most of all, it feels like a homecoming!
It might sound like a reach to claim that art changed my life, but it really truly did. Making art, allowing your mind to flow into a creative space- it unlocks something in people. Hell, even former US President George W. Bush is a painter! For me, it became a way to heal, to breathe, to make something beautiful to remind myself I am not alone. Now, I can’t imagine going a day without making art. My walls are literally covered in it. Art with words like, “Fucking up is still part of the process,” and, to quote Meg the Stallion, “Bad Bitches have bad days, too.” Art depicting strong women, lions, drag queens and my cat Bella - anything I adore - I have probably drawn.
Art gave me back my life, and now it is going to free me even more as an opportunity to support myself financially. I have been teasing a store for some time now, and I finally have one! I might have one product in it, but we all have to start somewhere! I have ideas for shirts and stickers, posters and prints. The phrases that motivate and inspire me are also the things inspiring others. My most popular item to date is a Risograph print made locally with a poem I wrote about dandelions and wishes.
If something I have made resonates with you, let me know. This community is an amazing group of people walking through life, all with different challenges and intentions, and I’d love to create something special for you. I am now open to commissions and ideas for illustrations, illustrating different quotes that resonate with you, or animals you find cute or supportive. You can reach out to me on my website for more information.
How has art changed your life? Do you have a story about your favorite piece of art? Did going to the Met for the first time inspire you to take up ballet or take on a career as a florist, or a ship builder? How has art inspired your everyday life?
Thank you for sharing these pieces of your story 🫶 I’m stepping into Substack after over a year off of social media and swimming in a soup of health issues and existential questions. And it (my Substack experience so far) has been surprisingly healing. Particularly, reading longer-form written pieces/essays by artists and disabled or chronically ill folks. And seeing how artists/people are bringing little pieces of light and whimsy into their day to day lives.
Life personally has felt so messy and stressful and overwhelming, but I’ve also had such a deep and growing pull towards *creating*. Which is something I haven’t felt in years, and I’m not entirely sure where to begin with it and direct that energy lol. Reading other folks’ experiences and relationships with creating art, like yours, has brought me little sparks of peace and connection. It’s both comforting and invigorating to see that other people are on these kinds of journeys too. And so many people are creating such wonderful and cool things.
I’m not really sure what my intention with this comment is, other than I felt drawn to write it. Thank you for creating art, for caring for yourself, and for sharing with others a way they can care for themselves, too. 🩷
I’ll be popping into your online shop to see if there’s a piece I can bring into my home to support your work. 🌻
Wow, you are multi-talented! Love your art, it's so expressive.