Do Your Own Thing: Create What Makes You Happy

By Fae Dutson, Snow Canyon High School Senior

I am a core believer that everyone has a thing. That thing can be reading, javelinthrowing, dog grooming—anything that makes a person’s soul feel a little brighter when they’re doing it.

I love art; I love it down to the marrow of my bones. I currently serve as the art representative on the Snow Canyon High School Executive Council, and I’m the Art Club president. I was selected as the 2023 SCHS visual arts Sterling Scholar and was even voted “most artistic” at our preference dance this year! Unsurprisingly, I am firmly set on majoring in art education at Southern Utah University in the fall so that I can teach art for my future career.

Everything about my life is molded and orbiting around my love for selfexpression, color, and creativity. Ever since my grubby baby fist could hold a pink crayon, I have been sketching and doodling on any appropriate surface at any given time. Nowadays, I mostly work with colored pencils and Canson paper, but my most common “victim” is a blank border on a school worksheet. (At this point, my teachers get concerned when my assignments don’t have drawings on them.)

My relationship with my art hasn’t always been perfect. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” This lesson has been a hard pill for me to swallow. Comparing my art to other people’s art has always been a point of vulnerability for me, and art competitions tend to fan those flames within me, fueling my burning desire to succeed.

It was when I was competing in the annual Fantasy Art Festival at Hurricane High School last year that I learned a hard lesson about comparisons. Generally, when judging is completed at an art festival, the judges take your art piece off the wall to present it with your trophy. So you kind of know a win is “in the bag” when you notice that your piece isn’t where you hung it up.

At the time, I was very proud of the artwork I had submitted, having spent hours creating it. So when my piece was removed from the wall, my pride told me that I had definitely placed. However, after all of the awards had been handed out, I found that I had earned nothing.

Humbled and a little embarrassed, I almost cried. As the Art Club president, I was ashamed that I had nothing to show that I was qualified. “This is my thing, dang it!” I thought. “I should have done realism like all of the winners did instead of making my piece so cartoony.”

The organizer of the event saw my expression and pulled me aside. He told me that he saw value in my art and that there was a definable, tangible, unique personality to it. He gave me an extra honorable mention ribbon that they had laying around, and that shiny green token gave me more validation than any trophy ever could.

So do your thing. Don’t hold back by catering to the tastes of others because then it’s their thing. Art is a therapy, a physical reflection of an artist’s emotions and thoughts. Create what makes you happy, and the right people will see you for who you truly are.