Face Yourself

August 16, 2025

To make art that matters, you have to face yourself. Not just glance in the mirror or acknowledge the outer surface, the curated version of who you are, but to truly look inward, past the roles you play, past the practiced responses and polished versions. To be an artist, in the deepest sense, is to cultivate the ability to turn your gaze inward and stay there long enough to see what’s really beneath. It’s uncomfortable. It can be disorienting. But it’s necessary. Because painting isn’t just about color and composition. It’s about truth. It’s about revelation. And the first truth you have to confront is your own.

That inward gaze becomes a kind of anchor. At first, it might feel like all you’re doing is exposing flaws, the messy, unlovable, inconsistent parts of yourself, the doubts, the envy, the fear, the fragility. It’s easier to look away, to keep painting on the surface, to rely on technique, to create beautiful distractions. But that kind of work stays in the shallow end. It might be admired, it might even sell, but it doesn’t move people in the way that only honesty can. Real connection comes from the willingness to reveal, to strip away the pretense and put something true on the canvas. And that kind of truth only comes when you're brave enough to look at yourself, unflinching.

What you find there, deep in the quiet, when the world falls away and it’s just you in front of the work, is humanity. Not just your own, but something shared. Something universal. Because once you face your own contradictions, your own griefs, your longings, your imperfections, you realize they’re not just yours. They're everyone’s. That’s where the power of art begins to emerge, not just as a form of expression, but as a bridge. When you allow yourself to be seen through your work, you give others permission to see themselves, too.

It’s not easy. Facing yourself never is. It requires humility, and sometimes pain. It asks you to confront the parts of you that don’t fit the story you tell about yourself. But the act of seeing, really seeing, is what transforms the work. You’re no longer just making marks, you’re communicating something essential. Something felt. The painting becomes more than paint. It becomes a record of a moment when you told the truth. And someone, somewhere, will feel that.

Art that endures, art that touches people in that deep, wordless place, it doesn’t come from cleverness or control. It comes from honesty. From vulnerability. From the hard, necessary work of turning inward, over and over again, and learning to stay with whatever you find. And then bringing that forward, into form, into color, into space. That’s what makes it real. That’s what makes it matter. Because the more intimately you face yourself, the more universally you speak.