Forty-six seconds. Forty-six seconds since I realized it was staring me in the face. The form before me was something that had always been there, it just stood in my blind spot for years and years.
Until I turned around to face it.


It first gained an embryonic shape in my early childhood. I always held an enthusiasm for the act
of creation. Something about books and cartoons just demanded that I make things in return. Out of curiosity and eagerness, I mimicked whatever I could of my father’s late night writing sessions and declining artistry. Formal lessons would never happen. Everything I made was always connected to some interest, from ornithology to Ben 10. Once I had just a bit of a foothold years later, it exploded into bloom. As my father's creative
endeavors ground to a halt in favor of attention to work post-divorce, I was the one to pick up the
pens and take his place. After all, the idea of even the chance to be one of those great monoliths of the visual storytelling world was simply mouthwatering. It glittered in my vision every waking second like the familiar skyline of New York, so close yet so distant.
Year after year, every wave of ideas and colors and things that I locked onto and wanted to be built up, washed away, and left bits of sediment behind. Sediment that slowly formed distinct, always-evolving layers on that entity's framelike silhouette. It still didn't look remotely human yet, though.


Until that constant ebb and flow stopped.


Well, not exactly stopped. Rather, it had been redirected at a singular point. I had settled on
something. A passion project. It started as an amalgamation of smaller shells of ideas
haphazardly stitched together in late-night sparks of sleepless excitement, then sculpted onto that frame and into a cohesive form. It didn't start as anything with meaning or weight. Simply another step in the cycle of build, dismantle, repeat. But this was different.
My attempts at a distinct artstyle-aping, really-slowly evolved into an alien yet natural state.
Ideas, worlds, and characters grew more and more fleshed out, and for the first time in my life I'd actually made something that felt whole. Something that the younger me would have killed for.


So I polished and gave it weight with restless fervor, growing increasingly enraptured by my
desire-no, need-to give this the full life and realization that it deserves…


Until I realized that what stands before me now, gaze drilling deep into my own, is myself.


Every single component. My style of expression through visual art: sharply geometric yet fluid,
saturated in color and dynamic movement. The fact that I physically look as if my art took form in
living flesh. The very characters within that project: they’re all just fragments of my own essence,
rearranged and repainted and all made to mesh together like fine-tuned gears in a gearbox.
Everything from interests, experiences, and personality fragments to flaws and even traumas, all
extracted and recontextualized into something that has evolved into the most overwhelming yet
subconsciously personal experience I have ever had in my life.

It is my identity. After all, art is said to be a window to the self. I am my art, and my art is me.
There's not much of a distinction between the two at this point. Theoretically, yes, these are two
entirely different entities but once you actually look, once you realize, it's like trying to classify
yourself and the reflection in the mirror as two different people.