How I Freed Up My Artwork
For most of my life, I have strongly identified with the role of a writer. For many years I wrote a blog, performed spoken word poetry, and was constantly in tune with the metaphor and meaning hidden in my internal world. But, in January of 2020, I felt inspired to explore a new creative outlet, bought myself a Winsor Newton watercolor set, and started painting. I had no idea this would turn into such a passion of mine, let alone a business, or that I would one day call myself an artist. I had always drawn as a young girl and throughout my life, but that was something I hid in notebooks and did in solitude. Me? I was a writer.
To loosen myself up from this strongly held identity, I had to make a few perspective shifts. Here are some things I found helpful:
I gave myself permission to explore a new creative path and hold multiple identities. A lot of books on creativity will tell you to focus on one thing so that you can perfect it (i.e. “to be a writer you must write”). For many years I felt a lot of guilt in stepping away from my writing - like I was letting myself down somehow, if I allowed myself to draw and paint instead. To combat this, I adopted a new mentality, one that allowed my creative expression to take many forms throughout my life, based on what I needed and I was drawn to in that time period. I chose to focus on living on a creative life, rather than overly identifying with one label or another.
I found inspiration in people who had walked many creative paths - like Suleika Jaouad, a writer who started to paint later on in life, and shared it all with the world. She could confidently hold both of these identities in tandem, so why couldn’t I?
I let go of the need for my artwork to look realistic. So often when you think of a painting or a drawing, you think of highly detailed landscapes or portraits that look like exactly like a photograph. The jawlines, the shadows, the contouring, are all perfect representations of the subject. And while that style is absolutely a work of art, for me it often felt constricting, like I had to effort my drawing into something, rather than letting it emerge into what it wanted to be on its own. When I started to embrace my own quirky whimsical style, drawing women that were anatomically incorrect and houses that didn’t have perfect proportions, I remembered that art is not just intended to be a photographic representation of something you see. It is also an energetic imprint, a playful interpretation, a translation, a hieroglyph of a point in time. Imprinted in a style that is completely mine.
I started to embrace my style, trusting that the people who liked it would find me, and people who didn’t would walk along.