Your art is a gift

I had a couple conversations recently that made me think. Why do we keep creating art when it’s so often not the easiest route? I made a short video about this that you can watch above.

To summarize… I think that all of us have two things that we want in life:

One of them is to uncover our most authentic self. Our what I call our core creative essence. This is who you are at your core. This is what people see when they look at your artwork because it comes through and it touches them. It's sparks, joy and connection to them. That's your essence.

Secondly, we want to share that essence with others. in that essence lies your greatest gift. And that gift is not just a gift for yourself, it's a gift to others. That's why when we sell our artwork, we create artwork, it's a gift to ourselves and others. What I'm talking about is what is inherently inside of you. It’s a gift. It's a natural gift that is given to you. You don't have to do anything for it - only uncover it and embrace it.

It's really hard for us to understand this coming from the culture that we've been in for so long. We've been in this patriarchal, colonizing, top-down culture where whatever you produce equals your value. Your parents, teacher, boss tells you what to do and if you do it, and produce, you get rewarded.

We are going from a top-down model to a circular model, which means each one of us recognizes our gifts and shares them with each other so we make the community stronger. I don't want us to stay in this top-down model. I want us to be moving towards a circular model where we each uncover our gift and share that with each other.

If you can think about your favorite musician or artist, what happens in your body when you listen to that music? It's a gift to you. It moves you. It changes you. That artist found a way to access their gift and share it with the world. It doesn't mean that they didn't work put in work to perfect the output.

That is my work is to help people to connect to their gift and to help them to get really good at honing it. What is life calling you to? What is your art calling you to? We all want to know.