It took me a while to be confident enough to call myself an artist. I started using that title before I truly felt I deserved it. Stacy Kenny Mitchell: artist, author, and entrepreneur.
Claiming “entrepreneur” is easy. I’ve been running my own businesses for over 25 years. There have been multiple iterations of entrepreneurship: computer consultant, quilt and yarn shop owner, health coach, Etsy shop owner, to name a few.
Author – that was also easy – sort of. Wrote a book, self-published it. Boom! I’m an author. That was my book on Positive Affirmations I wrote in 2014 And as time went on I felt a little undeserving of the title “author.” It wasn’t a long book – 40+ pages. Half the book is just lists of affirmations (I am confident. I am kind). I strongly believe in the power of affirmations, but I’m not sure that cobbling together lists of affirmations with an explanation of how to use them truly made me an author.
Earlier this year I published my first novella, Clear the Heir, a cozy mystery (that’s a mystery with an amateur sleuth and no blood/gore – think Agatha Christie or Murder She Wrote). So I’m back to confidently sporting my “author” title. I’ve started a sequel, but it will likely be a year or more before I finish it. Do you lose your “author” status if you don’t continue to publish? Surely not if you write a blockbuster tome (mine is not), so perhaps I will disappear into the expansive catalog of books available on Amazon if I don’t continue to write.
But artist. This is where imposter syndrome really rears its ugly head. Why the reluctance to embrace the moniker? It mostly stems from my conception of what an artist is. I usually envision “fine artist” when hear the term “artist.” Museum quality art. Oil paintings, sculptures, epic scenes in gilded frames. Those were created by artists. Me? I dabble in a little painting from time to time. I’ve never sculpted. I doodle. I sketch. I play around with shape and color – mostly digitally. Does that count as art? Is that enough to make me an artist?
I do create every day – in some form or another. Often it’s sketching or illustrating. Sometimes it’s knitting or sewing. That desire to make stuff is strong. Some of my creations are “art.” Many are not. But perhaps it is that way even for those painters and sculptors creating museum quality art. Perhaps they also have doubts and fears and suffer from imposter syndrome. Perhaps they also have stacks of unfinished work and pieces they don’t think are worthy.
My work may not be famous or important enough for a museum, but does that make me any less of an artist? It just makes me a not famous or very important artist. But I’m still an artist. I’m an artist because I want to express something through shape and color and texture. I’m an artist because I create art. And if you create – then you are an artist too. Claim it! And keep making art.
