Is it selfish to be an artist?

Making art is at odds with many of the values of modern life. It is mostly a lone pursuit in a time that celebrates extroverts not introverts.

It is done for love and self-expression and though I make a living from it, it is not the driving force yet capitalist culture calls on us to earn more and build a business from our passions. More, bigger, better is the common mantra.

Making art requires a discipline to keep on going, to make space away from the pull of scrolling and binging.

I feel held in the pull from my soul and the pull to fit in.

I am blessed to have had the opportunities I have had but in the juggle and muddle of life I still yearn for time for the raw connection of self to the universe that is making ART.

I once tried to stop being an artist. It felt too big a project to bare. It demanded too much of me and I couldn’t package it up into the space available to me as a new Mum. It felt selfish to take the time away from my responsibilities as a wife and a mother. I decided that my children were my biggest creative achievement and that they would be the main focus of a life well lived.

I never felt so depressed!

To take off yourself for another is the way to madness. Obligation and society shape us to do this for relationships, for parenting, for work. We are conditioned to believe that we are too much, too selfish just as we are. We build ourselves walls of expectations and end up diminished.

There was a moment of clarity, of self-realisation where I knew that the best thing I could do for my children was show them how to advocate for their own needs and to follow their own passions. I honoured them by honouring myself.

My commitment to them went well and they have made autonomous decisions about their education and ambitions and I work hard to enable them. And still I find it hard to keep showing up for myself. To keep honouring my artist soul.

I still have to bend time and make space to show up in the studio. I still don’t know how I fit in the freedom of creating, the work of a creative business and the needs of my family. Somehow I still wake with a heart that is open to possibility and a head that is determined to do more. I still want to shape my life and be proud of my accomplishments.

Why is it, even after 25 years as a self-employed creator I still feel the need to justify myself and carve out time and space that I can legitimately call my own? I support my family from my accomplishments and yet still feel I have to justify my work. Perhaps that is because my ‘work’ is actually play and I have won the lottery to spend my life based on this ethos of intuitive self-discovery.

As I have grown as a human and an artist I have realised the joy of enabling others to fulfil their creative soul and committed myself to demystifying the creative process. Being a self-employed artist means always needing to commit and recommit to my practice and trust the flow of ideas, of marks. A large part of my work is now in making courses that fuel creative practice and help develop self-expression and voice.

Contrary to box ticking and task management, creativity is more than what happens on the page. It is about how you think and the integration of the world around you into a form of expression. It is about being a creative everything. I run a creative business, I dress creatively, I parent creatively. I challenge myself to live with intuition, not a rule book. In my courses I believe in autonomous learning - offering courses that can be self-paced and accessible, fitting in with your handmade life.

We are all pulled in several directions. What is important is to know where your true north is. To know what it is that fundamentally gives you joy and purpose. In the push and pull of life, if you can sit down and write down what are the building blocks to make a happy soul and then sprinkle your week with those you will feel closer to yourself and better able to shine. My days are rarely routined, my weeks don’t match but my life is grounded in the key affirmation that art is life.

It is only when I do this, when I keep coming back to being me that I feel fluid and in that fluidity I can show up at the page with openness. So yes, it takes a focus on self to show up wholly and bravely create - but that is not selfish, it is essential.