What is an artist?

That’s the question I posed to my daughter’s third-grade class. Many of the answers I received you can can probably predict:

“A painter!”

“Someone who draws!”

But one response totally caught me off guard: “Your mother is an artist!” a nine-year-old boy cried out as he pointed straight at me.

“How do you know that?” I asked with a grin. “My mom lives in North Carolina and you’ve never met her!”
“Because she created you, and artists create things, that’s what makes them an artist!” 
Huh! I’ve never thought of it like that. Have you? 
We have this perception that artists, like leaders, are something special, something outside of who we are. That they have some special gift that we don’tall have–but that’s just patently untrue. We really are all artists, like we are all leaders. It’s part of what makes us human. In fact, we create art ALL the time–we just don’t realize it. One day I was washing dishes, and as I stacked them on the towel to dry, my oldest daughter called in her mom and sister to look. “Wow!” she said. “Look how Dad’s stacking the dishes. That’s a work of art!”

Who knew? Even stacking dishes can be artistic.

Release your inner artist. When we stop convincing ourselves of what we are not, it’s amazing what we can become.

How are you creating today?