“Please don’t lose sight of yourself. Your goals define you and without them your light goes out. Keep hold of your dreams and don’t let today’s dramas shape your future without your permission. Remember that it’s you who shapes the future and not your circumstances.”
I came across those words some time ago and they stayed with me. I cannot remember who wrote them, so I can’t offer proper credit, but the message has never left me.
For anyone trying to build a creative life, they hit hard.
Becoming an artist is rarely a neat or dramatic moment. There is no trumpet fanfare. No official letter arrives confirming you are now legitimate. Most of the time it looks far less glamorous. It looks like painting when nobody is watching. Starting again after self-doubt. Making work in the spare hours around jobs, responsibilities, bills and life.
It looks like carrying on when you are not sure if what you are doing matters.
That is where imposter syndrome likes to live.
It whispers that other people are the real artists. The trained ones. The confident ones. The people with bigger followings, cleaner studios, better contacts, stronger sales, clearer direction. It tells you that you are pretending. That sooner or later someone will notice.
The truth is far less dramatic.
Most artists I know, at every level, question themselves. They wonder if the new work is any good. They compare themselves. They worry they started too late, know too little, or should be doing more. Doubt is not proof that you are an imposter. Often it is proof that you care.
I think many of us wait for permission to call ourselves an artist. We wait until we sell enough work. Until we exhibit enough. Until someone else says it first.
But being an artist is not something handed to you by a gatekeeper.
It is built through practice.
It is choosing to keep making.
It is showing up again.
It is following curiosity.
It is making something from nothing.
It is being willing to fail publicly and try again privately.
That counts.
Life will always provide dramas. Money worries. Family pressures. Exhaustion. Setbacks. Days when confidence disappears entirely. If you wait for perfect conditions, you may wait forever.
The better question is this: can you keep hold of the thread of who you are while life gets noisy?
For me, art has often been exactly that thread. A place to return to. A way to make sense of things that words cannot always reach. Proof that even in uncertain seasons, something honest can still be created.
So if you are reading this and wondering whether you are allowed to call yourself an artist, here is my view.
If you make the work, you are one.
If you keep returning to it, especially when it is difficult, you are one.
If something in you needs to create, and you honour that need, you are one.
Do not let today’s doubts write your future.
Keep hold of your dreams. Protect your light. Keep making.
