The only way to answer is Since The Beginning Of Time, but our college essays beat that trope out of us and it is no longer relevant, even in poetry. Maybe I can approach it in a personal way: a lower middle class girl learning art in public school in the middle of the Midwest fell in love with Vincent van Gogh in third grade during a parent’s Art Appreciation Presentation. I never truly gave up “arts and crafts” as a kid, which means now I am an artist. I have a website organized with photos of things I’ve made, and a list of places that those things have been “seen,” and “accepted,” and paragraphs about why I’ve made these things.

Re-reading Art & Fear for the billionth time during a pandemic has reinforced how little anyone else’s opinion about art should matter.