Images of berets, cigarettes, drugs, & tatoos abound when the word “artist” is bantered about by the non- artist. I prefer the word “creative” to the former term. By definition, artists are “a person who practices any of the various creative arts, such as a sculptor, painter, printmaker, actor, writer, poet, dancer, or filmmaker, etc”. I prefer to expand that definition to “people who seriously express themselves in a creative medium”.
There’s an entire world of the arts outside of the fine arts box. Plenty of people have told me that they don’t have an artistic bone in their body. Whoa- not so fast. I tell those people to look at how they decorate their homes, how they dress, how they bake, what they sew. The world of creativity is vast. You don’t have to know how to draw to be an artist, but you do have to be willing to explore. In our productivity driven culture it can be difficult to justify that time. For myself it’s as necessary as eating.
But as in any walk of some are called to live a life of a creative. That can be in an “after hours” format as it was before I retired. Even 15 minutes a day can be gratifying. Even just reading about something you are passionate about can be gratifying. Taking a class is even better to get you among like minded people. Bit by bit can lead to greater things. You merely have to be willing to take that first scary step.
By Alanna Pass 