My Artist Friend Admitted This

Have you ever lain awake in the middle of the night wondering if you’re really qualified to call yourself an artist? You’re not alone. In this post I share a conversation I had recently with a group of advanced artists, where one of them asked something so vulnerable it stopped the entire room. What followed was one of the most important conversations I’ve ever had about what it actually means to be an artist, who gets to do this, and why the answer might surprise you. 

______________________________________

 

Have You Ever Asked Yourself “Who Am I to Do This?”

A little while ago I was in a conversation with about fifteen pretty advanced artists.

We were deep into it. Talking about the work, the practice, the challenges. And then one of them, a friend, got quiet for a moment. And then he asked something out loud that made the whole room go still.

“In the middle of the night I get this feeling. Who am I to actually be able to do this art thing? Who says I get to do this?”

Nobody said a word.

Not because the question was strange. But because every single person in that room recognized it immediately.

 

 

The Belief That Stops Artists Cold

This friend of mine is talented. He’s committed. This is a second career for him and he’s been showing up for it with everything he has.

And yet there it was. In the middle of the night. That quiet voice asking whether he was really qualified. Whether he had earned the right. Whether someone, somewhere, was eventually going to figure out that he didn’t actually belong here.

He said it himself. More than the cost of materials. More than the time. More than any technical challenge he’d ever faced. This one belief was getting in his way more than anything else.

And he’s right.

That belief will stop you dead. Everything is held up until you work through it. You cannot go past it by ignoring it or pushing harder or learning more techniques. It has to be met directly.

So I want to share what I told that room. Because I have a feeling this might be getting in your way too.

 

Where Art Actually Comes From

Here’s the thing I said that I think shifted something for him.

The art you make doesn’t come from credentials. It doesn’t come from degrees or years of training or someone official deciding you’ve earned the right to pick up a brush.

It comes from your heart. From lived experience. From the accumulation of everything your life has been, the good things, the hard things, the beautiful things, the devastating things.

I think about sitting with my mother when she was dying. I think about holding my daughter for the very first time, thirty seconds old, this whole new human being. I think about the friendships, the relationships that went wrong, the colossal mistakes, the moments of joy so sharp they almost hurt.

All of it. Every bit of it. That’s what you’re mining when you make art.

Your soul. Your intuition. Your utterly unique experience of being alive on this earth at this particular moment in history.

And here’s what that means. If your art is created from that place, from the emotional truth of who you are and what you’ve lived, it is by definition completely yours. Utterly unique in the world. There is no one like you. There never has been and there never will be.

So the question isn’t whether you’re qualified. The question is whether you’re willing to go there.

 

The World Won’t Have It If You Don’t Make It

There’s another piece of this that I think is worth sitting with.

You could make this art or not. That’s always true. It’s always a choice.

But if you don’t make it, it won’t exist. The world simply won’t have it.

And that matters more than it might sound. Because when you put something out into the world that comes from a genuine place, when you express something true about your experience, you don’t just create an object. You give other people permission to do the same. You liberate something in them. You start a ripple that moves outward in ways you’ll never fully see or know.

Someone buys your painting and lives with it. Their friends see it. Something in it moves them. That movement goes somewhere. It becomes part of the fabric of how people see and feel and experience the world.

That only happens if you make the work.

 

You Are More Than Qualified

I want to say something directly to anyone reading this who has ever lain awake wondering whether they have the right to call themselves an artist.

Your lived experience is just as valid, just as deep, just as rich as anyone else’s. As Picasso’s. As anyone who ever made anything that moved another human being.

Art doesn’t come from being special. It comes from being human. And you are that. Completely and entirely.

In fact, for those of you who carry the worry that you’re too old to start or to go further, I’d argue the opposite is true. You have an advantage. You have more lived experience to draw from. More texture. More depth. More of the raw material that great art is made from.

The permission you’ve been waiting for isn’t coming from somewhere outside you. It was never going to come from there. It comes from the decision to show up and make the work anyway.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

 

What Happened in That Room

Two thirds of the way through our conversation, something shifted in my friend.

His whole countenance changed. The weight of that question, who am I to do this, had been replaced by something else. A kind of quiet resolve. A recognition that the question itself was based on a false premise.

He was back in it.

And watching that happen, watching someone take the lid off their own possibility in real time, is one of the reasons I keep showing up to do this work.

Because this is important. This belief, more than materials, more than technique, more than time or money or circumstance, is what holds so many artists back from the work they’re here to make.

Don’t let it hold you back too.

 

Now It’s Your Turn

Have you ever asked yourself “who am I to do this?” In the middle of the night or in the middle of the studio or somewhere in between?

Share it in the comments below. You are not alone in this. And naming it out loud, the way my friend did in that room, is often the first step to moving past it.