At the beginning of this year, I made a quiet decision. I wanted to show my art somewhere. A festival, a show, a wall, a corner—anywhere outside of my own house and head. I wanted to take the thing I had been making and let it stand in public, however awkwardly, however imperfectly.
Not long after that, opportunities began appearing.
First, I found out I would be able to show work at an art festival. Then I got the chance to hang a couple of pieces at a small one-night art show. After that, more little doors kept opening. There was talk of painting skateboards, another festival, another show, and even a chance to paint pizza boxes for a local company event. It has all felt exciting, a little surreal, and deeply energizing. I love to create, and lately it feels like creation has been finding ways to call me forward.
A couple of days ago, I mentioned to my wife and daughter that I needed to make a trip to the pizza spot this weekend to pick up boxes to paint on. My daughter asked what the event was, and I explained that some other artists and I would be painting images on pizza boxes that would then be hung at the location.
She stopped for a second and asked, “Are you an artist?”
It was such a small question, but it hit me with surprising force.
Not because I didn’t want the answer to be yes. Quite the opposite. I would love to be an artist. I would love to be seen that way by her, by others, maybe even by myself. But when she asked, I realized there was some part of me unwilling to claim that identity.
In my mind, being an artist has always meant something larger, heavier, holier. It meant years of torment. Years of obsessive labor. Suffering for the work. Being misunderstood. Living half-mad in pursuit of some unnamable voice. It meant sacrifice and fire and maybe a little romantic damage.
To be fair, I’ve got the being misunderstood part handled.
But I haven’t spent decades in a garret somewhere wrestling beauty into existence. I haven’t been consumed by artistic anguish since adolescence. I just sat down about a year ago and started painting.
That fact alone has made it hard for me to believe I have earned the name.
So when she asked, I looked at her and said, “I guess you could say that I am, but I don’t feel like one.”
That answer has stayed with me.
Since then, I’ve found myself wondering what an artist actually is. Is it a matter of training? Output? Suffering? Dedication? Recognition? Is an artist someone who has made enough things, sold enough things, shown enough things, or suffered enough for their craft to be given the title? Or is an artist simply someone who makes art because something inside them wants to come out?
I’m honestly not sure.
Part of me still resists the word because it feels too important to wear casually. I don’t want to put on a costume that I haven’t grown into. I don’t want to call myself something that belongs to people more disciplined, more talented, more committed, more proven.
And yet another part of me has to admit something obvious: I keep making things.
I paint because I want to. I think about painting when I’m not painting. I get excited about surfaces, colors, symbols, strange little characters, and ideas that want to become visible. Opportunities keep finding me not because I declared myself an artist, but because I’ve been doing the thing itself. Maybe that matters more than my internal hesitation.
What struck me most about my daughter’s question is that she asked it without irony, without gatekeeping, without some grand mythology around what counts. She wasn’t asking from inside all the baggage I carry around identity and worthiness. She saw me making art, preparing for art events, talking about painting with joy and seriousness, and from her perspective the conclusion was simple: are you an artist? In other words, isn’t it obvious?
There’s something beautiful in being seen by someone who does not yet know all the reasons you withhold yourself from yourself. Children often do that. They move around the defensive architecture adults build. They see the shape of a thing before the thing has fully accepted its own name.
And maybe that is one of love’s quiet gifts.
Sometimes other people can perceive in us what we are still afraid to claim. Not as flattery, not as fantasy, but as a kind of early recognition. They see the seed and speak to the tree. They see the motion and name the direction. They see the becoming before it hardens into identity.
That kind of recognition can be frightening because it asks something of us. It asks us to consider that the life we want may already be underway. That the title we long for may not be waiting at the end of some impossible initiation. That maybe we do not become something only after total certainty arrives. Maybe we become it by doing it, awkwardly and imperfectly, until one day the name no longer feels borrowed.
I still don’t fully know if I feel worthy of calling myself an artist. But I know that I want to keep painting. I know that creating makes me feel alive. I know that when opportunities appear, I feel grateful and excited rather than fraudulent. And I know that my daughter saw something in me that I would love to keep growing toward.
Maybe that is enough for now.
Maybe sometimes we are carried forward not by our own conviction, but by the loving perception of someone who sees us a little more clearly than we see ourselves. Maybe strength can come from being reflected back to ourselves in a way that feels generous but true.
I don’t know exactly when a person becomes an artist. But I do know this: I would love to spend the rest of my life painting, and I would love to become the artist my daughter already sees.