My name is Misha Mazzitelli.  I’ve been doing art for roughly 8 years (I’m currently 16) and am in AP art. I never had a lot of people to support my path in art, a majority of my family telling me to move on and that I would never make it far in art. I started off drawing cartoonish cats that I must admit never looked very good, but they made me happy, and at the time it felt that was all that really mattered. I began losing my passion for art as I got older because I felt that people around me were so much better, and it was useless to keep trying, so after a while I gave up.

Eventually I went to high school, and having to pick 3 electives, chose art as one of them. I still didn’t feel confident in my work at the time, so I was shy and closed off in the first few months. Eventually with the support of both my art teacher and friends of mine, I started to grow more confident and soon I started studying other art forms, especially with cats. I have always had a love for cats, and even now just looking at them makes me feel happy.

The intention of my art is for anyone who may be having a bad day to look at it, smile and forget all of their problems, even for a moment;  I find it works for me too. I like to make my art feel alive, when I’m painting something (usually a cat) the pupils will always be the darkest thing on my canvas.  It makes it look like the cats are staring right back at me. I used acrylic paint for this piece; it’s nice to be able to achieve the desirable viscosity by mixing it with a bit of water or letting the paint dry a little before I use it to make it thicker, and with the dry time being shorter than say oil or any other paints, it’s easy to either blend, or wait for it to dry to create sharper lines and get the right shapes for whatever I may be painting. This piece took 28 hours to create.