Being an Artist

In general, it gives me great joy to hold space and create conditions that support people to get into the creative flow zone while connecting to each other. I have found that group attunement through creative play is supremely exciting to my inner artist and also fundamentally healing of many wounds. Also it's exhilarating - for me personally, it's the purest form of happiness. I hold the value of agenda-less creative flow for anyone who's drawn to it - it's not necessary to think of oneself as an artist, or any other kind of identity, to enjoy creative flow. 

That being said, I do think of myself as an artist. Independent of whether or not I satisfy socially established criteria like critical or material success, or even basic competency in a medium, I claim this title for myself, because it describes my way of relating to the world.

Since I choose to honor the dreams of artistry and creative life in my heart I can hold space for you to do the same, if you think you might be one too. Whether or not you are an artist is something that only you can discover. It has nothing to do with what other people think about what you produce or what they think of your fitness for the role. It is more like a discovery of calling, realizing what kind of being you are. I have compassion for the ordeal of this, as well as encouragement and understanding of the all-importance of this.

You may not feel that "artist" is a role that is integral to your core being, or you may. Regardless of the identity you may uncover lying dormant within yourself like an imaginal disc, nothing, in my experience, is more valuable than admitting who we really are, what we really love, and letting ourselves be and do that, even if we must push beyond the bounds of how we have been socialized to exist. This is our great work.

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Thumbnail image reverently appropriated from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert