Creativity is something that is born into each one of us. It’s been bred into us so that we will have a chance of surviving. We need creativity to thrive in an educational, business or any social situation.

Some of us feel compelled to use that innate creativity to communicate or express something through the language of art. How each individual does this is different, and yet familiar enough to be relatable on some level.

How much of your heart you pour into your work depends on your purpose or expectation of the piece.

If I want to show you in paint what a particular object or landscape looks like, it will still be painted by my hand and from my perspective, but I will do my best to copy or represent the facts, or at least the facts as I perceive them.

There is more going on in my brain than just the projection of focused light onto my retina. That image joins every other piece of information I have taken in, and so it comes out of the paintbrush with a distinct flavor of me.

You and I could set up easels side by side and render the same scene in paint. Our images will be different.

The advent of photography freed up artists to express something even more personal and more abstract through our art. Painting was no longer necessary for recording the world. We can put as much of ourselves into our expression as we want to, thus communicating not only what we see, but what we feel… what it is to be human.

We can let our minds wander freely through the vast archive of perception that we have accumulated. We can let our hand form marks without expectation and then be surprised by the results.

My academic struggles played a part in my lifelong identity as an artist. Arithmetic was so precise. The sum was right or wrong, and in my case, mostly wrong. I didn’t memorize my times tables, and this made every subsequent foray into math difficult and intimidating.

In art, there was no one right answer, and variation was encouraged. This was uncomfortable for some kids, and I can understand how some with different skills than me would want to know they had gotten it right. For me, art was forgiving and validating.

We’re all different.

I don’t think we need to strive to be unique, making being different our main goal. I mean, being different just for the sake of being different. I want to be understood, to be authentic and genuine.

The way I can be unique in my art is to be as me as I can be. I want to find meaningful analogies to help make sense of my experience as a human and then be relatable in my presentation. Nobody else can create anything from my perspective, and that is what makes me unique.

I don’t have to do anything to keep myself interested in my work, just as I don’t have to convince myself to keep taking one breath after another. Unlike breathing, I don’t need to paint every day. Art is not a chore for me. When things are ready to come out, they do.

Creative expression is not automatic. You learn as you go. Just as the basis for creativity is embedded in us by natural selection, practice and improvisation help us develop our voice. We find what works, and we also discover what does not work for us. This can lead to discouragement and frustration. We need to trust the process. It’s my own expectation of what something should look like that makes me feel discouraged.

I have to remind myself that painting is a process, and learning is a lifelong journey. It’s ugly sometimes and that doesn’t matter.