Personal Insight
Artist Statement
Art is the voice of my imagination and the voice that tells me the things that I do not know.
My art typically represents my emotions on a certain topic, song, scenery, color, combination of words and imaginary ideas. My optimal goal is to reflect what only my mind sees and my perspective of a concept, represented on a canvas, to allow others to see what I see. I want to convey the same feeling I get when I create a painting.
Some of my art portrays a narrative which is interpreted by what is going on around the focal point, but most of the time I paint an image to induce a certain emotion on the viewer through movement, symbolism and color. Art also teaches me what I do not know and my exploration of it, as a growing artist, is a wonderful time being.
I am Crystal Naïve Baltazar.
One of the many things I enjoy doing is long running distance. Running was and is a big part of my life and for that reason, I will dedicate my personal insight to this part of me.
I have been a long-distance runner since my freshman year in high school and have loved it since then. My coach was amazing and my time running with her was the only time I ran at my best.
My first year running Cross Country was eye opening for me because I realized that I had a talent that I had not utilized until then. I was the first girl in my league as a freshman therefore, my track season that year was a blast. Cross Country and Track as a Sophomore was equally as great because my times kept dropping at a good rate.
Towards the end of the Cross Country season during my Junior year, my times stopped dropping and started going up. After spending a lot of time talking to my coach, we concluded that I have had chronic ankle instability since I began running during my freshman year. It was progressively getting worse and there was nothing other than physical therapy and painkillers that I could take in order to relieve the pain and have mediocre performances.
Unfortunately, that following track season my coach was fired and nothing seemed to get better from there. I still managed to medal once in a while, but making it past subsections to move onto sections began to look like it was no longer tangible. I worked extremely hard to have a good Senior year and make it to sections for the fourth time. Even if my whole season was worse than my freshman times, my perseverance paid off because I made it to sections for the last time.
I had hoped that my last track season would finish the same however my coaches constantly encouraged me to sit out in order to heal. I understood their reasoning, but I knew I would not heal in a few weeks and that was the last time I would run with a team competitively, so I wanted to make the most out of it. In the end, I did improve my times by a few seconds, which to me, was a great accomplishment considering my terrible season.
I still run in my free time and join a few fun runs, but I hope that sooner or later, I will feel the strength I felt my first years running long distance.
