Who is an artist?

When I was a mousy girl with a sketchbook full of pencil-smudged drawings, my best friend was an artist. She was a few years older and just as much a sister to me as my twin. The three of us spent hours drawing together, and it was a regular part of our lives to share our pictures of made-up worlds and characters. My friend proudly showed off picture after picture—some she had inked with pen and even signed! I thought, a real artist.

We continued to draw together, later falling in love with manga and Japanese-inspired art styles. In high school, we entered a phase where it became impossible for my friend to go anywhere without a sketchbook. While other kids rebelled against their parents or pushed the envelope with new freedoms, there we were late one sticky summer night, scribbling away between turns at the bowling alley. To my teenage self, you didn’t get any more artistic than this. But I was soon set straight by my friend.

“If you draw every day for three more years,” she told me, “you might get as good as I am now.”

My heart sank. I wasn’t an artist yet.

Who is an artist?

When I was a shy high school and college student with an ever-present story notebook in my backpack, my friends were artists, most of them writers. One crafted horror screenplays with characters based on our circle (sadly, the twins in his stories never made it out of the haunted house). Another friend posted stories on social media based on her favorite TV shows that garnered thousands of readers. Though I kept drawing, my first love had always been writing stories. Between classes, I’d dive into my notebook to add a few more lines to the latest spy adventure, poem, or fantasy epic (at the time, fifty pages was an epic to me). But if you had asked me then, I would have said I enjoyed writing, but unlike my friend’s work, my words didn’t garner attention and I didn’t have an audience. I thought, I’m still not an artist. Still not good enough.

Even while I worked on my master’s thesis, a young adult novel in the blended science-fiction/fantasy realm like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, I didn’t consider myself an artist. I was just an apprentice learning a trade. I wove my Christian faith into a story that anyone could read, a story about literal and figurative light in a very dark place. And with it, I also had the conviction I should pursue traditional publication, seeing the world of pop culture as a mission field with few Christian workers.

At the time, I did not know that rejection and failure were the marks of my newly chosen field.

Years passed, and as I slowly amassed a dreary mound of rejection letters, I struggled to understand. Had I misunderstood my calling? Why did my desire to represent Christ in this field only flame brighter whenever someone politely, but firmly, shut a door with a copy/pasted rejection letter? But even as that desire pushed me on to send one more letter, to try one more time, I felt that old disappointment sink in with a new bite—perhaps I’d never be an artist.

Who is an artist?

Over these past years, I have spent time deep in the words of writers like Makoto Fujimura, Leo Tolstoy, Timothy Keller, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle considering this question. I talked with others who also wondered about how to use their gifts in the church, if their talents were really necessary to God’s work, if art, in any form, was simply for personal fulfillment. I felt lost in the woods on a moonless night, unsure if I was still on the right path, or if it was even a path at all. But that is when the questions you ask yourself are the sharpest, as well as the most important, like Who am I? Where does my worth come from?

As I pored over Bible studies and nonfiction treatises on work, vocation, and creativity, I found an answer. Surprisingly, it was the answer I had started with: You are a being created in the image of God. But something had changed in my own understanding. It wasn’t a sudden change at all, only one so gradual that I didn’t recognize it until one day it seemed to drop into my thoughts like a letter through a slot.

We are created in the image of God, which gives every person we encounter an inherent and unshakable worth and dignity. Erwin McManus puts this beautifully when he says, “In the full meaning of the word, you were born a masterpiece, a work of art, an expression of the divine imagination.”¹

But what else does that mean? God is the almighty Creator, and as people created in his image, we are also creators. That means that we cannot help but create, and when we create, we reflect God’s nature, even if it’s miniature and shabby compared to the divine masterpiece. On a more practical level, that also means there is a false dichotomy of makers and non-makers.

Who is an artist?

While you’ve been reading this essay, I’m sure that you’ve been thinking, perhaps with a bit of an eye roll, that of course the person who wrote this article is an artist. I haven’t even told you about how I’ve baked and decorated wedding cakes, illustrated picture books, or taught myself tsumami zaiku to craft kanzashi.² But what I offer for your consideration is that you, too, are an artist. While we may agree that the word “artist” might be helpfully used to refer to those who make a living with their creativity, we should recognize that we are all creative.

This naturally brings about a need to expand our definition of the arts to include not only the high and fine arts, but also the practical and the everyday. In his book Adorning the Dark, Andrew Peterson discusses his passion for this kind of understanding of art that encourages “people to look for the glimmer of the gospel in all corners of life, that they would see their God-given creativity in both their artistic works and their front gardens, in their home repair and the making of their morning coffee, and that they would call out that glorious creativity in everyone they meet.”³ When we look to the example of the creation we live in, it’s clear that art is not strictly lofty and special, to be admired from a respectful distance or left to the experts. Our Lord has created a world of daily wonder that includes not only majestic mountain views, but also the flowers growing from cracks in the pavement. And that’s not to mention what lies beyond what we can see, like spices to taste, a pet’s soft fur to stroke, and birdsong to hear. It is all art, and none of it lives behind glass.

The arts often struggle for a place in the work of ministry and Christian living. It’s easy to think that the arts belong to a special class of Christians with rare gifts or perspective, or that the exercise of those gifts belongs in a different realm from the daily walk of faith. But if you consider the capacity and desire to create as a God-given characteristic we all share, then not only does our understanding of God deepen, but also our understanding of ourselves and the work ahead of us. In Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning states, “Because we are made in God’s image and likeness, you and I are yet another promise that he has made to the universe that he will continue to love it and care for it.”⁴

When we expand our definition of art beyond fine art or performance, awards or audience recognition, we will find nearly infinite ways to reflect God’s love and serve as extensions of his provision. No special tools are required; we can create beauty wherever we go with what we already carry with us. Practicing hospitality, raising children, making a home, running a business, teaching, tending a garden, cooking meals—all of these can be art, and we should never forget that beauty can reach people in a way nothing else can. And with beauty, goodness and truth will follow.

Who is an artist?

All of us.

1. Erwin McManus, The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 188.
2. Tsumami zaiku (“pinching craft”) is a traditional Japanese craft using square pieces of cloth that is folded to craft kanzashi (ornamental hairpins), typically in the shape of flowers.
3. Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2019), 168–169.
4. Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust: A Ragamuffin’s Path to God (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 140.