We Need Your Art

We need your art.

I envision you picking up this book, reading the title, and squinting at it with deep suspicion. ‘My art? Who needs my art?’ We do. The world does.‘The world needs my art?’ you ask incredulously.Your art. We, the people, need YOUR art.‘But why?’ So glad you asked. I wrote a whole book about it. Let’s begin. Most of us have had, at some time, an inkling that there is something more – that we have something to give, to make, to create. Perhaps you have a glimmer of an idea for a novel or a bizarre pull toward watercolour paints. Maybe every time you watch a good movie you feel overcome with a grief that you weren’t a part of its creation.

You are made to create, but it’s so hard to detach and rewrite the stories we have been sold about what we are meant to be doing with our lives. Many of the systems we’re forced to participate in smother our creative fire; some don’t even let us light the match. We’re told that in order to be responsible, we need to focus on the serious stuff. The adult stuff. Not that art stuff. Not that making stuff. Many of us wouldn’t dare lay claim to the title ‘Artist’. That word is for a special group of people. Not you, not me, right?

Screw these stories.

I believe you are on this planet to make art. I believe we all are. Making art is the ultimate human act. The impulse to create is instinctual, untaught, innate to us as a species. I could talk (and I do) to literally anyone and discover that somehow, somewhere, even under the most debilitating circumstances, they are currently creating something or have an idea about something they want to make. Denying art is denying your nature. The act of creation makes a better version of you. It gives you purpose, agency, and challenge. It demands that you explore the caverns of who you are and discover what lives within – the beautiful and the messy.

You are on this planet to make art. Not just for yourself but for the world. Because it needs your art. Humans rely on the arts to inspire, to take refuge, to challenge, to awaken. Communities flourish when artists live within them. Once more: you are on this planet to make art. Spreading that simple idea has been my mission for the past decade.

For a long time, I wanted to tell stories. But I held the shameful belief that making art was frivolous, irresponsible, and embarrassing – that I should probably keep my hopes to myself. Still, I wrote. And as I told my stories, something changed within me. Writing connected me to joy, to ambition, to rebellion and delight. These silly little stories were giving me purpose.

It took a few more years of deconstructing my creative shame to realise this feeling of purpose is precisely the magic of art. Creating gives us agency, it gives us control, it gives us delight. The bizarre external forces of the world no longer batter us, or at least don’t batter us quite so much. When we create, we become the author, the maker, the god of our own little artist realm.

I’m not alone in the realisation that art is deeply important for individuals and crucial for communities and society as a whole. Study after study from pioneering researchers like Daisy Fancourt and Maria Rosario Jackson show the overwhelmingly positive impact of the arts. Creating art consistently not only increases happiness but also reduces negative affect and makes us feel more satisfied. I’ll get into the research later. For now, it’s enough to say we live better when we make art.

Not only that, we make other people’s lives significantly better when we make and share our art. Art heals our bodies, improves our mental health, and creates thriving and connected communities. And yet we are still sold the story that creativity is frivolous, reserved only for children and the retired.

Art is for everyone. I’m not just talking to those of you who want to make art professionally. All art is inherently good. It is inherently responsible. Art creates community, it gives us meaning, it heals us. It is the furthest thing from frivolous that it is possible to be. Which is why we need your art. We need it because it not only helps you but everyone around you.

You have been told that the things you want to create don’t matter. We will destroy that lie. If you follow me to the end of this journey, my hope is that you will never doubt your creative calling again. I am here to take you seriously so you can take yourself seriously.

We are storytellers by nature, which means we get to rewrite these stories about what we are meant to be doing with our lives. And we get to put creativity at the centre of them. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. We will have to excavate our souls to do so. But the work is exciting, and the reward is worth it: joyful, abundant creation.

‘Excavate our souls?’ one reader screams. ‘But I just wanted to make some art’.

SAME. Unfortunately, the making of things means the making of you. Which is both very annoying and very beautiful. But let me reassure you about a few things. You do not need to have been good at art in school to read this book. You do not need to have taken courses. You don’t even need to be a practising artist. But if you are – if you have been in the arts for decades and thrived – you will also benefit from this book. Because this isn’t a book about craft. I’m not about to tell you how to use parenthesis to create tension in your novel or how to perfect the scumbling technique with your oil paints.That’s a journey for you to traverse through practise, play, and mentorship. I am about to tell you how to get out of your own way and recognise that you have art to make. You could research scumbling and parentheses for decades and never create a thing if you do not also learn to get out of your own way. And we all, wherever we are in the journey, need support as we do that.

This book will start by making a case for creativity. My promise is this: after reading act one of this book, you will know that art, your art, is important, powerful, valuable.

The second act is an anointing, a coronation, a realisation. Together we will realise (or realise again – this process is one of constantly re-realising) that you are an artist, and that your future is going to be full of art. We are going to take the word artist off the pedestal and recognise that creativity is yours, now, and is available to you with ease, with joy. Then, through a two-week reset, we are going to create sustainable, unique-to-you creative practices that are resilient in the face of creative blocks. This reset is here to connect or deepen your connection with whatever art is calling your name.

In the third act, we will navigate creative blocks, or what author Steven Pressfield calls resistance. All artists struggle in the process of making art. It is the creative inevitability. In this act, you’ll find support as we move through the feelings of shame, avoidance, fraudulence, jealousy, and exhaustion.

Then finally, in act four, the largest section of this book, we will explore creative abundance. I want to show artists how abundant and magic their practice can be. Artists should thrive in the process of making art. We will look at how you get good, finish projects, and, if it interests you, chase mastery. We will examine how we develop voice, navigate success, liberate ourselves, and celebrate ourselves.

You are an artist and you have so much to give. So this book, in its essence, is a devotion to you. Your ideas, your creativity, your expression. It’s here to convince you that you are here to make art, and we absolutely need what you are making. It’s here to ensure that you get out of your own way and make the thing. I want this book to envelop you with permission and hope and excitement.You are a onetime phenomenon in the universe, with art to make that has never been made before and will never be made again.

I have sprinkled journalling prompts throughout this book because I want you to consult with you, the artist. You know more than I ever will about your unique creative journey. I need you to ask yourself questions. To guide yourself.To choose yourself. I want you to become your own muse.

There are no rules on how to answer these prompts. Feel free to write in the margins of this book, think about them in your head, or jot something down in the notes app on your phone. These questions are simply an invitation to realise that you already have the answers, that you are the authority on this creative journey.

I have always learned through journalling. When I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron in 2017 and started my own journalling practice, it changed my life. I have seen it transform the lives of hundreds of artists. The simple act of looking at your own thoughts is transformative. Research suggests that journalling is a safe and effective way to move through and unblock yourself. I credit the journalling practice with all of my healing and all of my creative success. As long as you’re willing to ask yourself questions and notice the repetitive patterns and stories your mind has absorbed, you’re doing it right.

It is not easy to undo the stories, to step out of the system, to use your voice and share your art when others won’t understand, but we need you. We need your creations, your voice; we need you in your truest expression. It’s time to step up. Pluck the strings. Start the painting. Write the book. Do the thing.

It’s time to start.