Art as Identity
Art as identity – Are you an artist because of what you make or how you live? What happens if you stop making art for a while?
We can often think that being an artist is about what is produced - what I had to show for myself. Pieces finished. Projects completed. A portfolio that proved I belonged and that I was worthy.
But I don’t think that way anymore. Belong to what? Worthy to who? That’s all stuff out there. In here is what counts.
I’ve gone through long stretches in the past where I didn’t make any thing that left a record. Nothing finished. Nothing shared. Life took over, kids to raise, bills to pay, or the well ran dry. And I’d wonder—am I still an artist?
The answer is yes.
Not because of what I was making—but because of how I was seeing.
Being an artist, at its root, is a way of being in the world and how you look at it. It’s how you notice things. How you process experience. How you hold beauty and sorrow in the same breath. How you move through life with attention and imagination. That doesn't disappear just because your hands are still.
Of course, the making matters—it’s part of the process, part of the response to life. It’s the map making part of the path. But neither the trail nor the identity vanish in the quiet times. In fact, sometimes they deepen there. The fallow seasons teach you what the fertile ones can’t.
So, if you stop making art for a while - on purpose or by circumstance - you don’t stop being an artist. You just enter another state. Maybe it’s gathering. Maybe its letting go. Maybe it’s time for healing. Maybe it’s just breathing, observing.
The world likes to measure by output. But the artist’s path isn’t linear, and it’s not performative and it’s not competitive. It’s internal. Intuitive. Alive in the way you live, not just in what you produce.
Your life and how you go about living is the art, whether you’re capturing it in artworks or not. When you are ready you’ll be compelled to pick up your pen or pencil or brush and continue.
This essay's timing is great for me. It's a topic I think about often when I'm not creating any art in the studio. It's redundant to say '....in the studio' because when I am taking a break for whatever reason, I AM still thinking, dreaming, about making art. I have a dear friend who's an artist in Argentina. English is his 2nd language yet I've had my most profound conversations with him over the years. And once when I told him I was not doing any art (this was many years ago as I had to have a 'real' job as I got divorced), he told me to not stop creating. To start out with small things, or even in how I create my living space, how I arrange my things on a shelf. He too said we don't stop Being an Artist just because we aren't in the studio making it but that it's in our soul, how we live, see, speak, decorate, dress, are with others....in other words.....it's something that is so much a part of us, of WHO we are as human beings. I never forgot what he said and so when I finally put my 'toe' into the art waters after many years.....I stared small. Made these little assemblages. Felt safe. Then eventually the art pieces grew to the normal size I work in now and used to work in when I was showing in the gallery. Loved this article you wrote. Thank you.
I needed to hear this. Thank you.