Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic

Most artists are so busy simply attempting to produce satisfying work or make a living that they forget that, ultimately, they are making work to communicate their own version of the truth. We make work that mirrors our own deeply held ideas about the world.

Surround yourself with voices that challenge you or that you don’t understand, not just other artists who resonate for you or who you want to emulate.

Creative thinking happens in most people, but what differentiates most productive artists from the rest of the population is that they are compelled to do something with their ideas, and they are also usually able to work through fears about not being ready or not having the right set of tools.

One of the outlets that acts of creativity give us is the opportunity to discover, and then to express, what’s inside us.

The truth is, when we first start something, it can feel wholly uncomfortable. It can even feel risky! What if we fail? When we have an idea for what we want to create (perhaps related to whatever gave us the spark and the urge to make something in the first place), the end result we envision is often so far from what we have the skills to do. So w

Instead of making just one or two of something, I made bodies of work, the accumulation of months of daily practice.

I forced myself to go outside into nature, to museums, and to places that inspired me. l brainstormed new ideas, made lists of things I was interested in, and delved into books and films in my

Sean Qualls. He reminds us that your voice becomes stronger when you “develop your vocabulary.” Of course, he doesn’t literally mean your vocabulary of words. He means your vocabulary of interests, knowledge, and ideas. We develop our vocabulary by going deep into learning and exploring the world—reading books and magazines, watching films, listeni

When we are in the process of finding our artistic voice, we are almost constantly straddling the planes of belonging and independence, of being part of a movement and having our own unique form of expression, of emulating artists we admire and breaking away from them.