The Difference Between Personal Art and Universal Art

Most of us assume art gets better through technique alone, sharper drawing, mastering the medium, refining the craft. But a conversation with artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa revealed something deeper. The work that actually lands comes from going personal enough to hit something universal, something every viewer recognizes in themselves even if they can’t say why.

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Why Do You Make Your Art? The Question Worth Sitting With

I’m still in Bali. Watched a gorgeous sunset last night and ended up staying up far too late just listening to the rain. The air here is so fragrant, so full.

Sitting out in the darkness of the rainforest, my mind wandered to art. Not so much the how. The why. Why we actually make it.

The Default Answer, and Why It Falls Short

The default answer is probably to get better, to draw more accurately, to master the medium, maybe to make something that looks like the art already out there that’s doing well. And to a point, that’s true. Technique matters. Skill matters. But none of that is ultimately what makes work land.

So what is it?

A Conversation That Changed How I Think About My Own Work

I keep coming back to a conversation I had a few months ago with my friend and artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa, someone decades into her own work. We talked about finding the meaning below the surface of art and how healing that is, not just for the artist, but for whoever sees it.

Judy pointed at something worth sitting with. If you’re willing to go personal enough, you’ll hit something universal, something essential, something human.

That blue that’s really the freedom you didn’t get as a kid. That shape that’s an old dream you never let go of. None of it is private, even when it feels like it is. Everyone carries some version of the same ache. To be free. To be seen. To be loved without flinching.

You don’t have to literally explain any of this in the work itself. You just have to know it, or at least be holding the answers while you’re making it. The knowing changes the paint. It changes the art. And the people who see it feel that difference before they can ever say why.

Going Deeper This November

This November, Judy and I are going further into this teaching in person. She’s joining me at the Art2Life Santa Fe Retreat to co-teach an art session, a surprise addition to the retreat. 

If this kind of work, the kind that asks you to go personal enough to arrive at something universal, is calling to you, this retreat is built around exactly that.

Click here to learn more about the Santa Fe Retreat and join us.

The Question Worth Sitting With

I want you to sit with this question: Why do you make your art? That answer is what takes your art from being quietly personal into something magnetic, something universal.

What’s the why underneath the surface of your art? Leave a comment below and let me know.