I am not an Artist, yet Art keeps Finding me

“I am not an artist,” I say.

Yet life shows itself to me in metaphors that I reflect both inward and outward.

“I am not an artist,” I say.

But my hunger for beauty is a driving force in my relationships, my actions, my conversations.

“I am not an artist,” I say.

But no act of kindness feels too small, no pain too unimportant, no insight too quiet for my emotional antennae.

“I am not an artist,” I say.

Yet I paint my dreams, dance my anger, collage my soul back together, and co-create with nature.

Almost without noticing, art kept slipping into my days.

I started the year painting, with the New Year’s concert from Vienna playing in the background. I didn’t know then that art would become one of the main threads of my year, both an instrument of self-integration and a process I would facilitate for others. From where I stand now, my art-making moments no longer look like scattered attempts, but like well-rounded beads of experience arranged on one string.

I am not disciplined in making art. Inspiration rarely finds me working. I am moody, spontaneous, and messy when I create. An idea chases me down, I rush to execute it, often disregard the “proper” steps, and rarely achieve a perfect result.

Oh, but how I revel in the process!

At its peak, painting moves everything in me. Between brushstrokes, as the music swells, I erupt into dancing, swaying across the room, then swirl back to the canvas to study it from new angles before tackling it once more.

Acrylics, watercolors, collages, and occasional mixed media, including pieces of nature, are among my favorites. Although I’ve been painting and drawing for a few years, it was this past year that I explored more ways of using art to process what was on my mind.

Every exploration offered something different. Art becomes my outlet for feelings and ideas when words are too tight or too flat to hold them.

How do you explain the communication that never truly happens, drowned out by the cacophony of pains screaming out from each of us? Sometimes shapes and colors do it better.

And what about the contradictions and fragmentations fighting to inhabit the mind? Place them on the canvas, where they can be safely contained and coexist in harmony.

Sometimes my mind and body are tense and simply seek the soothing sensation of a hand moving a pen or stretching paint across a canvas. Other times, a theme stretches itself from one artwork to the next, trying to resolve a larger story.

One of the reasons art has become more present in my life lately is Mental Bytes, which I was invited to co-create with my friend Geoffrey. Drawing from our personal experiences with the arts and experiential learning, and from our shared studies in expressive art therapies, we design group activities that help people use art for self-reflection and deep inner change. We like to test our methods on ourselves before offering them to others, something that strengthens both our own inner work and the quality of what we bring as facilitators.

I’ve discovered that making art together and reflecting side by side, add a new layer to self-expression. The self-discovery involved is deeply personal, yet sharing that creative time and space fosters co-regulation. And when we share even small parts of what the process felt like, what it stirred, clarified, or revealed, it can bring relief, understanding, and the simple, wonderful feeling of being seen.

The question of whether I am an artist or not, can wait for its answer. What I know for now is this: art held me this year. It helped me hold others. And it keeps teaching me how to hold myself, sensitive, curious, unfinished. I find myself growing and also giving a voice to the quiet little girl in me who is still learning how to show herself to the world. So I keep showing up to the page, to the canvas, to myself.