Dear Canvas
Dear Canvas,
I know what you were created for, and I see what has happened to you: this blasphemist act of torment which has stemmed from the death of fine art through social media. There you are, all painted pretty; pink and turquoise with your chevron stripes. I know you weren't primed properly with a gesso to guarantee that you will be archivable for future generations to admire you in a gallery, no, you will never have the chance to hang among Van Gogh and Monet's works. You have been stripped of your very purpose. You probably sat wrapped in plastic with a barcode on it in a Hobby Lobby or Micheal's fine art department. You were made for greatness, for glory, to be put in history books. You did not ask to be put there on that shelf by part-time Hobby Lobby employee. You did not ask to be stretched out on frail pieces of wood and stapled to them. You could have made it, though. You could have been picked up by a starry eyed young artist, and you could have held their first marks made in oils, and you could have been put in a small gallery to spark a career. But no. You were not given the home you deserved. Instead, you were picked up by a person who may have seen something on pinterest or tumblr. Like a knife on flesh, a cheap paint brush smothered in hot pink craft paint was raked across your beautifully textured surface. Your owner didn't even care to mix the colors by hand or paint over the white on you. You could have been glazed or layered with abstract shapes, for art's sake. Alas, you were not given the chance. Like a chamber of torture, you were held beneath a stencil and drawn on with a mechanical pencil. They didn't even care to pick up a pack of graphite pencils with varied lead hardness so they could mark on you with light, gentle strokes so the marks wouldn't show through the paint. There you lay, beneath a stencil, only to be covered in the most atrocious hue of turquoise craft paint. Curvy cursive letters litter your surface; the Comic Sans of hand-painted lettering. The only hope you had was that you could have been given to a friend and painted over and primed properly. That's not what happened to you, though. The flash of an iPhone camera damages your surface even more, and you're put on Facebook and Instagram like you're on some sort of sick crucifix. The crucifix of fine art. You get dozens of likes and comments, all accompanied by computer generated smiley faces whose eyes are hearts. Like an innocent person on a stake, you're mocked by ignorance. Nobody cares that you've been turned into the very thing that destroys what your kind was made for. You now probably hang in a bedroom or nursery, maybe even a bathroom. You'll never be wired and put on a gallery wall like a respectable canvas. You're nothing but pretty, and that's all you can be now. Dear canvas, I am sorry.
Sincerely, An artist who would've given you what you deserved
