Are We Not These Paintings?

Are we not these paintings?

What I love about art 
is it's terrible beauty
The color and darkness
The joy and terror

It is full and empty
Breathtaking and oppressive

each piece hewn from the mind and soul of someone expressive
And I respect that 
Each demonstration  may not cause my deep exhalation
But, I respect that person, because they brought their heart, their life out into the open
Some moment born into the world caught their heart and as if they couldn't hold their fingers back from the brush.... They express.
and they are better for it, lighter
Because their expression releases them

And, I get that

Maybe it's the most terrible painting I've ever beheld....

But, I get it

Are we not those paintings?
Terrible, awful, brilliantly canvassed, framed so ornately, meticulously stroked and paint thrown at walls, sculpted of old doorknobs and fishing line

Are we not these sculptures?

Each standing in representation of some victory triumphant, some moment of failure or fault
Some time in their life filled with hope

And just like our humanity, I am drawn in or repelled

Because we all want to be known and exposed and for the layers of our hearts to be held and examined, looked on intentionally and with careful discretion
 We create, because we want to be known
We want Him to know, them to know
Show the world something

And who's to say what I think is beautiful is really so, 
Because it's constructed of this or that, looks this way, and is defined by me

I am not the creator or the judge of it's validity
I am my own piece 
I am splattered with every shade of blue 
I am carefully, violently and with pressed fingertips outlined in deep charcoal
My yellows shine behind the silhouette pushing my frame forward to the tip of this ledge, like stars hiding behind the night sky, begging to be released from the captivity of daylight

I am my own piece 
So is he 
So is she
So are they
How can you say we are not
How can each piece say to the other, you are not art, you are not beautiful, you are not created to be looked at, touched,
you cannot draw others in.

We are.

We are these paintings.