Letter to my Inner-Artist, & yours

Prompt to Ponder: Write a letter to your inner artist — what does it need, fear, or long for?

Write about all three if you’d like.

For so long, I’ve heard people say things like, “I can’t make art,” or “I’m not an artist.”

When I finally began to identify as an artist myself—which took a long time and a lot of honesty about where my joy truly lived—I noticed something surprising: irritation. Every time someone said they weren’t an artist, I wanted to tell them they were lying to themselves. And truthfully, I did. So, I’ll tell you the same thing today: you are an artist.

Where does this belief that we aren’t begin?

I think it starts with how we idealize art. We put skill, recognition, and fame on a pedestal. We build hierarchies around what counts as “real art” or “good art.” But art is subjective—completely and beautifully so. The world decides certain artists are “great” while others are overlooked. Basquiat and Warhol are my favorite example—two friends, two artists from the same era, both revolutionary in their own right. The world made one an icon and the other a mystery for a time. Yet both shifted culture.

Art is truly subjective.

And I mean that down to your first grader’s family drawing—where your eyes look like stars and your arms are noodles dancing through rainbow skies beside balloon dogs. That’s art, too. That’s imagination. That’s expression.

We measure beauty by taste, but beauty itself is infinite. We limit ourselves when we decide what’s good or bad, and we limit ourselves even more when we decide we can’t do something.

Honestly? It’s all bullshit.

I could give you a conspiracy theory about “the Man” keeping you from your creative power—but the truth is simpler. It’s us. We keep ourselves from our passions, tangled in our own fears. We’re afraid to dream, to imagine, to create something that might fail—or worse, might reveal something real about who we are.

And let me clarify—when I say art, I don’t just mean painting or drawing. I mean the act of creation itself. The imagination it took to design the first ships that crossed oceans. The imagination it took understand farming. The imagination it takes to believe something better is possible—whether that’s a new invention, a new way of living, or a new version of yourself.

Art is that inner spark that says, “What if?” It’s the courage to follow that question wherever it leads.

The courage to understand when we need to dream — not only for ourselves, but for others — is a sacred kind of bravery. It’s the courage that can change the world.

Each of us carries an artist within. The artist who loves deeply. The one who allows themselves to feel fully, to see themselves honestly, and to recognize that same truth reflected in others. This inner artist is not only the one who creates, but the one who witnesses — who honors what it means to be alive and aware.

We build our lives around the stories we tell — the stories of who we believe we are, where we’ve come from, and where we hope to go. These stories shape our reality. Around the world, we build our lives like tapestries — interwoven threads of memory, imagination, and experience.

But where does the essence of who we are truly meet all of this?

It meets us in our expression. In those moments when we create, we catch small, shimmering glimpses of our true selves. Every brushstroke, every word, every dance, every melody — each one is a mirror reflecting back a piece of our own becoming.

Through expression, we remember. We remember what it feels like to be whole, to be connected, to be seen — by ourselves first, and then by the world.