Never Forget You Have a Creative Side
Guest writer Kerry Pieri talks about her art, the fear that came with going for it ("Who was I without my job?"), and how creativity is about "revealing who we are in order to make each other better."
Why Are We Afraid to Embrace Our Inner Creative?
There’s no permission slip required. The act of creating is available to all of us, and, as guest writer suggests, we owe it to ourselves, and others, to follow a spark.
Who is allowed to be creative? Who is anointed to call themselves this big, important word, “artist”?
I’m not alone in loving the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being by music producer and staunch minimalist Rick Rubin. It captures the plague of self-doubt so effortlessly. It fluently expresses the inner chatter that hinders our creative output. “When gathering seeds to begin our work, we may be tempted to look for a grand sign before committing ourselves,” Rubin writes, “a clap of thunder to assure us that we’ve found the right path. We may discard ideas that don’t seem of great importance or magnitude…
“Sometimes the smallest seeds grow into the biggest trees.”
No grand invitation will come asking you to create. No one will give you permission to write or draw or dance or make music. Some, a choice few, might never question it, they know it is their birthright.
More people will take the well-worn path, get their degrees, move up the rungs of the ladder, maybe someday find small spaces for creativity in more traditional environments. That’s what I did. I earned a Bachelors in fine art and writing, and instead of moving to New York and risking it all to be an artist, I spent many, many hours interviewing at magazines and television shows. It took years and twists and turns but I landed a dream job at Harper’s BAZAAR. There, for over a decade, I got to write, edit, and create images within well-worn parameters. It was equal parts exciting and wonderful and just a little bit limited.
One aspect Rubin doesn’t speak to is that this inherent need for “permission” to create might be more prevalent in women. Society raised us to be “good girls'' who do as they’re told and present ourselves properly and to not make a fuss. Being an artist is the opposite of blending in.
About five or six years ago I started painting nude line drawings. A small seed, in Rubin-speak. I posted them on my Instagram when I was still at my full-time editor job and sold a lot of them. It felt good to have my art appreciated but also more like a side hustle than a fresh life path. When I moved back to my hometown during the pandemic and worked remotely for two years I suddenly had space to create. Consider it Virginia Woolf’s room of one’s own, or, in my case, a small turret with natural light pouring in where I could paint with oil on canvas.
I sold my larger works on a beautiful website called LES Collection and on my own. Then for a year and a half I over-thought it. I had recently left my full-time job, and instead of leaning into my art, I got scared. It would no longer be something I did on the side of a position that was generally celebrated. It would require considering myself an artist. Who was I without my job? Who was I to think I could do anything without this big name behind me? And so, I hid that part of myself, and I stopped painting.
Then from my shadowy corner I started to draw again; I took classes with other artists and nude models in small rooms with charismatic instructors. I recently created a new series of paintings titled, Who Defines Beauty? They are graphite pencil and oil on canvases in antique frames. They feature the question in Latin: Quis Iudicat Formam.
I like using Latin, a dead language, because I think it gives it gravitas and imparts a sense of timelessness. This series is inspired by Greco Roman and other iconic sculptures by artists like Rodin. The pieces are inquisitive of the value we put on these sculptures that are objectively beautiful but also falling apart, missing limbs, and sometimes decaying. And how we tend not to extend this grace to ourselves or others, whom we often judge harshly, consciously or not. We focus on perceived imperfections instead of recognizing the inherent perfection within us all.
The answer to who defines beauty is, of course, you. Just like the question of who defines an artist is, exactly, you.
Now, I don’t put expectations on my art, and it can manifest in images or words or everyday moments. It comes down to a simple question that Rubin asks: “What if the source of creativity is always there, knocking patiently on the doors of our perception, waiting for us to unlock the locks.”
And so I’ve created these things and I want to show you these things because they came from my mind, and my heart, my psyche, and my soul. I want to share these things with you because that is how humans connect; there is a universal, unwritten contract. You sing me your song, I read you my poem, you present your film, you paint his portrait, she shows you how to breathe, he teaches you to dance, she captures my photograph, you grow a garden, he arranges its flowers, just so, to remind you that you are beautiful too. And so it goes in a breathless cycle of revealing who we are in order to make each other better, to make each other see, to make each other heal.
To discover, and shop, Kerry’s work, visit her website.
Small, really good things that can elevate your mood, your outfit, your jewelry…
Kevin Kwan’s latest is a perfectly-timed summer read. I can’t wait to devour this, as I have with the rest of his Crazy Rich Asian series.
I haven’t used much on my brows—no pencil or liner—but I do use a setting gel that I haven’t fussed with or compared to any others. Enter this one at the recommendation of a friend, and I’ll never go back. It keeps things more groomed-looking, but without any color (which my dark, fairly full brows don’t really need).
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