Make art every day
Five years ago, I spent a week at a “midlife wisdom school” designed to help people like me—people like you—clarify our desires for the future. Some of us were solopreneurs (as I was at the time) while others had full-time jobs (as I do now). A few were between careers. It’s fair to say we all were searching for something, or we wouldn’t have been there. So we dug deep. We felt ourselves opening up. And by the end of the retreat, we all had discovered something tricky and true about ourselves. We were invited to share our intention with the group.
My vision—my promise—was that I would “make art every day.”
At the time, I was regularly posting to my blog, but I didn’t believe my words qualified as “art.” I also was occasionally creating crude drawings and paintings, but because I was only self-taught, I didn’t think that counted either. I was playing at improv and goofing around at open mike nights with my ukulele. Though my new compadres considered me an artist, I didn’t believe them. If I was an artist at all, I was an imposter. I longed to be the real thing.
But what if we lighten up about what is and what isn’t art? What if we decide that art is anything that’s created with imagination and intent? Then maybe, when I write or scribble or play with paint—or write a silly song—maybe I’m truly making art. And maybe so are you. We just have to believe that that’s what we’re doing!
So here are a few ways to change our story about what is and what it isn’t art. And who is qualified to make it.
Art is everywhere. Look down. Pick up a leaf or a heart-shaped rock. Notice the figures in the clouds, and how, every hour, the light is different. Wherever you go, carry a small sketchpad and a gel pen or a pencil. Maybe a portable pan of watercolors and a brush. Try to draw what you see. This can seem intimidating at first, but any little scribble, any splash of color, is a start. Some days, it’s enough just to know I’m carrying supplies in my bag.
Art is communal. During Covid, we couldn’t easily visit museums or concert halls, but we found community online. I took songwriting and guitar with other musicians, and took group art classes online. I believed I was making something akin to art, and I began to believe I was an artist simply for showing up.
Art can set us free. Especially these days, we need beauty and we need color. We need fresh expressions of ideas and emotions. We need physical proof—through painting, sculpture, film, dance, writing, photography, and theatre—that we can create something wondrous from the wreckage of our despair.
It will take monumental creativity to craft a new story about ourselves and the world around us—especially now. So that too is a form of art. And we all—every one of us—have an obligation to participate in making it.
Because art is whatever we say it is.
