“Are you an artist or is it just a hobby?” The question jerks me out of my concentration on tiled rooftops. 

After a pause, I respond, “Well I don’t make money off of it , but I’m an artist, I guess, I would call myself an artist.” He nods. Silence falls between us. “Well enjoy” he says and walks off. 

I turn back to the page in my sketchbook, troubled by my response. Is my identity so linked with productivity? I look up, staring blindly at the rooftops. Now taking in no information, unable to bring the oil pastel back to the page.

Why did I respond in this way?

I catch an angle of a roof I hadn’t seen before. The sharp meeting point of centuries old streets. I am able to draw again. I’ve formed a better, more useful, question: Why would anyone ask me such a silly stupid question?

Are you an artist? He asked as I made art before him. He didn’t turn to the street musician next to me and ask, are you a guitarist?

This questioner has pinned the two things as opposites — being an artist and having a hobby. 

The question troubles me. What is “just a hobby” anyways? What is the opposite of “a hobby”? — a profitable enterprise? Celebrity status? An obsessive passion? Something that should be valued more than something that is “just” something else.

Are you an artist? — is this your identity, your raison d’être? Is this your career?

I am first bothered by the weakness of my own response. Why did I feel a need to erase a part of my identity under the guise of “well I don’t make money from it.” Perhaps it’s a classic American blunder to equate career with identity. But what am I supposed to do when an identity is posed in opposition to “just a hobby,” something off to the side, not something of true importance. 

As I return to deepening the shadows of church domes and the crooked street corners of Porto’s streets, my response ceases to bother me. I was stunned by a silly question and gave a silly response. 

At the heart of the question is a demand to explain myself. Explain why I am creating art in a public space.

~~~

I am distracted from the carved stone branches and flowers for a moment. A tiny bike holding a man with disproportionately large hair spins by, glancing down at my sketchbook. The road bends and he is about to disappear when he calls out, “how long have you been drawing?” He spins the bike around, landing, curly hair still bouncing at my side. “I was drawing for about a year and then I stopped.”

“You stopped? Why would you ever do that?” I ask. 

“I get really invested — obsessed — with certain art forms, and then I just stop, y’know? I go for months intensely working until I can’t stand it any more. Can I sit? Please don’t let me distract you. Keep drawing, I’d just like to join you if I can.” I offer him the piece of cold sidewalk next to me. “You know it’s very rare to see someone drawing on the street, not doing it for anyone or for money or anything.”

“Well it’s what I do. What I love to do.”

His curiosity and energy is insatiable. He has plans to build an artist collective in Sintra, he knows the musician down the road whose music has kept me company the last hour, and he has often performed as a sort of clown, decorating his bike with butterfly wings and riding around. The hair seems incredibly well fitting to the clowning life, but I don’t mention it. 

In between his analyses of the state of the world and the importance of art and nature, he continues to hit me with waves of intriguingly difficult questions: “What inspires you about this section of the property?” “How do you begin a drawing?” “How long have you drawing?” “Do you always work in pen?” 

He accepts in stride my baffled inability to explain certain things. “When I’m working in a visual medium I find it hard to explain it with words,” I say. “I could talk about my writing, maybe, but I don’t know how to explain why I made this mark.” He nods along eagerly and rolls out more questions, observations, commentaries. We pass a happy hour or so in each other’s company.

He doesn’t demand explanations, but has a curiosity and a desire to connect. 

When he spins away on his tiny bicycle, I’m left with enjoyable questions to ponder, and with energy to fuel my own questioning. 

~~~

A few days later, I am drawing in the Alfama neighborhood in Lisbon, alternating between drawing the skyline and drawing the figures watching the skyline. The cold night is beginning to set in although the sun hasn’t quite set yet. I set down my pen for a moment and gaze out.

“May I interrupt your work?” asks the figure to my left. The crowd has surrounded me all day and I had barely registered that someone was sitting calmly by my side, watching the skyline and watching me. 

“Yes”

“Are you a student of art?”

“No, I’ve just been making art my whole life. I attended an arts high school, but that was years ago now.” 

His eyes are opened disconcertingly wide and he seems unable to blink. But his voice and questions are gentle, intrigued. I respond and explain that I finished my last job and now I am off traveling for a couple months.

“You don’t often see people just looking,” he says. “No drink, or smoking, or talking loudly, just looking. I can tell from your drawings that you have a special way of seeing.”

It’s not a compliment. It’s an observation so carefully made and genuinely expressed that it touches me more than a compliment would. 

“I don’t want to interrupt your work further, but I am a composer, I hold concerts for special people, people who can appreciate them. People with a special way of seeing, like you. I’d like to invite you.”

We exchange information and talk for a little longer. He explains how he moved from Porto years ago, began teaching music, and ended up committing himself fully to his art. I describe different mediums I’ve worked in, my conflicting desire to both travel and have a steady studio. He’s anxious not to distract me further and hurries off to catch the next tram. I look forward to listening to his music.

~~~

I welcome the curiosity, the stares. The questioners too. Once I’m in the zone, I hardly notice those around me. But I catch one or two out of the corners of my eyes.

Adults often do a little hesitant dance: straining their necks, attempting to appear to be casually walk by, lingering by the same view point but glancing often towards me. They are never as sneaky as they want to be. Often when the attempts at discreet observation are too amusing and obvious to ignore, I flash them a smile. I don’t mind, I try to say, stay as long as you like.

Children, with their notorious ability for honesty and spontaneity, will simply walk directly up to me and stare. Often they stand just at my shoulder, glance up when I look out to the scene before me. A smile will appear once they understand, once they see what I see. 

Once while painting on the pier in Schoelcher I had a little girl come and squat by my side. She was barely three years old, if that, but she had discovered how to speak. She watched intensely for several minutes and then began to ask. She wanted to identify the ships and rocks in my painting with those at sea. She carefully lined them up as I explained. Her face remained puzzled and intense. 

Eventually she found the question for her puzzlement, “but what about the fishes?”

“The fishes?”

“Yes, the fishes. Where are they?”

“Oh.” I paused. “Well they’re under the water, in the sea.” Her puzzled, concentrated look continued. It was not a satisfactory answer. 

She already knew that fish were in the sea, of course. I turned to look at the sea, then back to her small face. I had obviously missed a key part of the scene. Why were the fish not in the painting?

 “Can you see any fishes right now?”

She stared out. “No.” 

She stood up as I was saying, “well that’s why they’re not in the painting.” She understood before I could explain. 

I’m not sure she agreed with the artistic choice. 

~~~

The question in Porto left a sour taste — “Are you an artist or is it just a hobby?” But I had had delightful, intriguing questioners before he arrived. By contrast the demand to explain, rather than a curiosity to connect and know, is sour. 

But to be gentle to the Porto questioner, I think he was not in the habit of observing, he likely wouldn’t describe himself as a creative person. But he had been creative at some point. All children are, that’s how they learn. It’s why they’re so joyful, why they feel so much. 

The desire to create is deeply human. What makes a human human is the desire and delight in stories, art, observation, connection. Both in the making and the experiencing. Some of us are so sorely disconnected from this fundamental humanness that we demand explanation when we see a living version of it.

“Are you an artist?”

“Yes, I am. And you? I believe you are too. What do you create? Music for special observers, poetry, laughter for people you love, fish cloaked in the sea, bicycles disguised as butterflies?”

-j