Dear, Ms. Kramarik

Dear,
Ms. Kramarik

There's a girl, much the same as you. I see all of the same talent. Her paintings don't sell for millions of dollars. My writing doesn't get purchased. At least not yet.

You're my favorite Artist, Ms. Kramarik. Not because you were a prodigy, but because you drew the best portrait of Jesus. What kind of world do we live in, where talent like yours doesn't get patronized? It's a secondary hobby. It isn't taken seriously. I've seen a man paint Michelangelo's bodies in the most photorealistic eye I'd ever seen. I do not know if it gets patronized. I do not know if it gets sold.

The things done with art---the disinterest in it, the utter disregard for it---is wonderfully wrong. Everyone who paints like you---and there may be at most a couple thousand---ought to earn their living off of the craft. What is the world without art? What is the world without music or poetry? Without stories? When money dictates our stories, when money dictates our art, and when money dictates our music, it tears people like us apart.

Art needs to be sold--- There may be nine billion souls on the earth, but only a couple hundred thousand of them painters. A couple hundred thousand of them writers. A couple hundred thousand of them musicians. Everyone wants to believe that talent is equally distributed among all people---but, due to a writing disability, I could never reach the level of proficiency you reached at four. Not everyone can be an artist. Not everyone ought to be. And painting ought not simply be championed by the newest fads. It ought to be based on the merit of a painter.

I say this because it's true. I don't doubt the world has no lack of artists, but we are still a rare breed. Those of us who can produce works of art. If you have to go to school for it, it is not in you. If you go to school for it because it is in you, there's little the school can do beside teach you the techniques. You were painting at four and I was writing at ten... It is not a bad thing. It is not something that ought to be moderated. Rather, if we decide that all men are endowed equally with the same gifts, we tend to shun the ones who are naturally gifted. And we elevate the ones who simply pay the money and put in the hours. And they come out painting when they should have been an accountant or a Lawyer. Do you understand, Akiane?

The world grows larger, so there are more of us now competing. So, the world has decided to shadow ban us, and make it so we cannot earn our meat. They want to turn someone like me---useless for everything else---and make me another brick in the wall. I'm the spray paint on the side of the brick building. One of my little pet dreams was a city that allowed Graffiti on the walls, so it would beautify the city. Obviously, graffiti is just a way gangs mark their territory, which amounts to the reason why that dream will never happen. Yet in some places, it is right to have an artist come and spray paint their art upon the wall. And it is beautiful. Why cannot you or I create on the traditional canvases, and make money, too? You made money. But I see so many artists turn to their art and say, "It is nothing." As if the enormous gift weren't meant to be fully explored. No... what happens is so many artists see their art and figure there is no money in it. For some of us, it is all we can do.

So there are extraordinarily gifted individuals who can paint like you, or write like me, and they choose to ignore that gift, and pursue monetary gain. And there are extraordinarily unlucky people like myself who need to write, yet the markets will not allow it because they are saturated by a third type of people, who by industrious studying of markets, trends and alchemic moldings of words or paint, they find themselves in the position of making money off the crafts that we ought to. And sure enough, you have made your money. But, I cannot yet.