For most of my life, I lived in words. I studied English literature, became a teacher, and always felt at home around art, literature, the quieter corners of the human experience. But creative? That was never a word I used for myself.
Then life stopped being gentle. Two years spent in and out of hospitals, holding on for someone I cared about while they fought cancer, wore everything down to routine. I moved through days like a machine. Feeling wasn't really an option anymore — it was a luxury I couldn't afford.
Early in 2025, a loved one who knew me well enough to see what I couldn't suggested I try a drawing class — taught by Marjan Sabeti. I didn't go looking for art. I went looking for anywhere else to put myself for an hour, some kind of escape from the weight of everyday life.
What I found instead was a way back to being human.
I started noticing things — the curve of a line, the shape of a shadow, the way a face holds a feeling. Drawing became narrative to me before I understood why. Time disappeared when I worked. I hadn't felt that kind of quiet joy in longer than I could admit. Portraits, figures, everyday objects — I drew what was in front of me, and somewhere in that process, I started to feel like myself again.
Over the next year, pencil lines gave way to dip pen and ink wash, then color pencil, then gouache. I have no formal training in art — only a background in literature and a stubborn curiosity — but I watched myself improve almost daily, and that surprised me more than anything. My sketchbook became as essential to my day as my phone. I began journaling life visually instead of in words, for the first time trusting a language other than the one I'd built my career on.
By 2026, something had shifted for good. I decided to commit myself to art fully, financial uncertainty and all, because I understood — finally — what I wanted to be known for. I wanted to paint. To create. To keep chasing whatever this feeling was, because nothing else in my life had ever felt this much like purpose.
That same year, my piece In Custody was selected for NFT NYC, shown first on a billboard, then in a gallery in New York. It isn't a large thing in the scale of the art world, but for me it was proof: this is real, and it's worth taking seriously.
So here I am — still learning, still noticing, still finding out what a line can say that words never could. Thank you for taking the time to look.
Alireza Jalaei (Alizula)