Where Art Begins

One essential struggle I've dealt with as an artist is that I often turned my suffering into art, but the more I did that, the more suffering became a tool for creation. I found myself courting suffering in order to create. I created something beautiful from my pain, and suddenly pain transformed from something I experienced into a resource--something I reached for to find inspiration.

I started to fear that without this source of inspiration, I might lose my ability to create. There was a fear that peace would make me 'ordinary', but the truth is that fear constrained me more than peace ever could. Peace liberates you to create outside the constraints of suffering, free of fear.

Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Pain is part of being human. Suffering is the story we tell ourselves about that pain, the way we hold on to it and make it part of our identity.

When I surrendered the need to manufacture inspiration from pain, when I trusted the creative process itself, inspiration began flowing through me from the most unexpected places. There's a lightness that comes from freedom, a seemingly infinite wellspring where inspiration and creation become unconstrained. Since finding peace, the creative process feels different—more relaxed, and more expansive. There's a sense of creating from fullness. Freedom, not suffering, is where art truly begins. I've never been more fruitful in my creation than since I found peace.

Where does peace come from though? For me, it didn't just appear out of nowhere. Something in my life shifted—something simple, ordinary and mundane, but powerful enough to rearrange everything. But that is a longer story for another essay...