Identify the Cause

June 22, 2025

There comes a point in every artist’s journey when the question shifts from what to why. At first, it’s easy to get caught up in the surface—what we’re making, how it looks, how it compares. The materials, the style, the audience. But the longer you stay with your craft, the more urgent the real question becomes: why am I doing this in the first place?

That question is everything.

It’s easy to make art for the wrong reasons. We live in a world where attention is currency, where every creative act can be instantly uploaded, liked, and judged. It’s tempting to create with one eye on the audience, wondering how it will be received, what it will get you, or if it will be enough. But art made with that kind of pressure—art that chases applause or algorithms—rarely survives the test of time. It might get attention, but it won’t hold weight. It won’t breathe.

Real art begins in a quieter place. It starts with a feeling you can’t shake, a question you can’t answer, a moment that moved you so deeply you needed to turn it into something. It comes from somewhere honest. Somewhere raw. And it often comes long before you’re ready to share it.

That place—the origin of your work—is sacred. And if you don’t take the time to understand it, to really sit with it, your creative path can start to feel unsteady. You’ll second-guess yourself. You’ll look sideways, comparing your work to someone else’s. You’ll forget what brought you here at all.

But when you know why you create, when you’re in touch with the real source of your work, everything changes. You become less concerned with perfection, and more focused on truth. Less obsessed with outcomes, more devoted to the process. The work becomes personal, necessary. It becomes an extension of who you are, rather than something you’re trying to sell or prove.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to share your art. Sharing is part of the human impulse to connect. But the intention behind the sharing matters. Are you offering something real? Or are you trying to fill a void with approval? Those are very different things.

For some, the motivation might be a memory that keeps returning. For others, it’s a vision of the world as it could be. It could be healing, protest, longing, joy, curiosity. There’s no wrong reason—only ones that are honest, and ones that are not.

Taking time to reflect on your personal “why” can be grounding in a way that few things are. It gives you direction when the path feels unclear. It gives you resilience when you hit resistance. And it helps you recognize what you’re truly trying to say with your work—not just what you’re making, but what you’re reaching for.

Because when it comes down to it, the art itself—the finished painting, is just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is the cause. The reason you picked up the brush, that’s the part the audience might never see, but it’s also the part they feel, whether they realize it or not.

Ask yourself, sincerely: Why do I create? And don’t rush the answer. Let it unfold over time. Let it grow and shift with you. The more you return to that question, the more clarity you’ll find—not only in your art, but in yourself.