Please make your art, you’re giving to us all
Even if you and I never meet or see each other’s creations, we give to each other when we create something from within ourselves.
You don’t have to call yourself an artist, or want to be one, in order to make your art.
Nobody else has to see or validate that you made something, it can be your own personal creation. Whether that something is a garden, a painting, a beautiful meal, a class, a friend, some space inside of yourself - you are engaged in the act of creating.
This creative energy spreads to others even when you don’t tell them about it or post photos on social media. When you allow yourself to have your innate creativity, something begins to radiate from within you. That something is you, and nothing else feels like it, nothing else can replace it.
You can choose to create something and release it to the world, and for that I thank you.
If you’ve done this you know how vulnerable this can feel. When you give from your true self, it is an act of selflessness. With your courage in choosing to be this vulnerable, you may encourage someone else to light their own creative spark and find the joy that comes from being a creator. This is no less than you yourself have experienced your entire life from seeing the work of others.
Many times I’ve found myself saying ‘thank you!’ out loud to the creator of the book I wept over, the film that made me laugh and feel amazing, the music that lifted my spirits and helped me find my happy again, the painting that brought me joy and sparked a new idea for my own work.
I am grateful to the many creators, the artists, the people who stepped up sometimes in the face of great odds and resistance, to bring their story / film / invention / art / idea to the planet.
A recent example is the wonderful documentary ‘Summer of Soul’, lovingly created by Amir Questlove Thompson about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, from footage that would have been lost forever without this film. The festival itself was sadly overshadowed by the Woodstock Festival happening the same year, and many people don’t even know about it. Happily, we have a brilliant film to be the witness that this watershed event happened. Thank you, Questlove. Definitely see this film!
One of the books that helped me decide that yes, I could write things down and share them with others, was written by a woman who was way ahead of her time, Brenda Ueland. The book is ‘If You Want To Write’, A Book about Art, Independence, and Spirit, and was published originally in 1938. I highly recommend adding this one to your shelf, it’s inspiring and beautiful. Thank you Brenda!
Being an artist can often feel like a solitary lonely path, even when you know many others who are on this path as well.
Even if you are working with others to create something, you still have to do your own work, to dig in and find that nugget that only you can bring forward into the world. Nobody else can create for you, and nobody else can create what you will create, when you’re coming from your own truth as an artist. You don’t have to know all the answers or how to get there, the trick is doing the work required to make your art.
Many artists worry about competition - if there are so many others out there already doing similar work, why should they? They think they don’t have anything new to add or say. It’s the act of doing the work that matters, and besides, competition doesn’t exist when you are being yourself. If you’re trying to be like the others because they’re getting attention or doing well, it won’t work. This is true in life and it’s true in art. You are already an original, you just might not know it yet.
There is no one correct way to be an artist, a writer, a performer, a visionary, a healer, a teacher, a psychic. From early on in life, and all the way through, many of the schools we attend seem designed to program students into a nice safe limited creativity, a fitting into the group, or lining up to an ideal that someone else decided was the ‘correct’ way. Let’s not upset the apple cart! Someone’s already found the correct path, just follow along quietly please. The problem with this way of thinking is that nothing changes, and we do not evolve and grow. People become afraid to look for their own truth in the morass of dogma, for fear of getting thrown out of the group.
Making art is the antidote to making war.
Making art makes us uncomfortable, and doing something outside of the box upsets that old established apple cart. Being who you really are also brings discomfort, for you and for some of those around you. People might get upset or angry with you or me when we choose to be ourselves, to be different from the others, to question, to introduce new ideas. Real art can make you think, feel, see, imagine, heal. Evolution is here.
Many artists I know, myself included, sometimes run into energy that says art isn’t important, that there are more important problems to worry about. This energy goes on to say that we need to spend all of our creative energy helping heal the planet, end the wars, and that it is selfish to spend time doing something we find so pleasurable while so many others are suffering.
Nobody can be responsible for healing the planet, for fixing all of the problems. It is not one person’s job to take all of this on. We are all here together, and we do need to care about what is happening on this planet. And, more than ever now, we need to rise up and make our art. We are more effective in coming up with new creative solutions, ideas, ways of living. Creating the new always brings a release, a destruction of the old structures that no longer serve us, and those structures do not want to go away.
Every time you and I create something new, we also help dismantle the old out of date ways of being, without having to fight anyone. The creation becomes the new.
“Making art is too important to be left only to art professionals.”
-Fred Beshid, Museum of Fred
Resources for your Creative Self
Art Exhibit: If you’re in Atlanta, check out the “Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature”, which runs at the High Museum until May 21. This show has been described as ‘a love letter to the natural world’. I saw it yesterday, and I’m still floating through those incredible images of Stella’s. His flowers and his visionary paintings are exquisite!
Maira Kalman is a fabulous artist you should know!
I’m a huge fan of Maira Kalman’s work, ever since my sister Betty turned me on to a fun and sweet book called ‘Max in Hollywood, Baby’, which is a children’s book - BUT so very fun for adults. Because we need to remember to play, and this book is about that. There are several Max books, as well as many other books by Kalman.
One of my favorite books by Kalman is ‘The Principles of Uncertainty’, which you can find here.
Greetings from my art studio! Have a wonderful and creative week!
