Creative Self-Expression
A Place to Hold Half-Finished Ideas
I’ve always known I loved to create. When I was younger I was very involved in art and loved many different mediums including pottery, drawing, painting, and sewing. However, over time I started to feel like no matter how much I loved art, there was always someone out there that could create something better. I’ll likely never be the kind of artist who ends up in a museum, and when I was younger, I thought that was the only way you could truly consider yourself an artist. So, I wrote off all of those mediums as “child’s art,” and it took me a long time to come back.
My perspective on art has changed recently. I’ve gone through some turbulent life changes, all of them leaving me with heavy emotions to process. It’s felt like the world has been crushing down on me and I lost the spark of joy I had for a lot of my hobbies. Partially because I felt like these hobbies had to turn into something productive and money making to feel valid.
That was when I started to notice the thread of thinking that said what I create only matters if someone else thinks it does. I got stuck in a rut, wondering what the point of creating was if I didn’t feel justified in sharing it. It didn’t feel like it mattered to use art to creatively express myself when I didn’t find the value in showing it. Even if I did make something I considered to be good, one good project didn’t feel like enough to claim the title of “artist.”
My own criticism was crushing me.
So I sat with myself. I asked why I only felt allowed to create if I was validated for what I was creating. I began to create almost in secret. Sketching here and there, crafting a pair of earrings for myself, mending old clothes. This creative self expression helped satisfy my instinct to create without needing to show anyone.
After a while, it got easier. I started creating just to feel myself create. Sometimes I’d go in without a plan and just let my pen move or throw something onto the page. I started making things I was genuinely happy with and even wanted to share. Even the “ugly” things I didn’t like the outcome of, I began to appreciate for the emotion that led me to make them in the first place.
In the end, when I needed to process those heavy emotions, art was there to push me along. It let me express my inner world peacefully and acknowledge things I had been too afraid to share. Ironically, both my emotions and my art had been tucked into that same box, too private and intimate to show.
So, as I grow as a human and learn to embrace all of my emotions, I hope to share my art with you, no matter how messy or incomplete it may be.
