We are All Artists

"We make art with our life," writes blogger Renee Robinson in a community contribution for our "Art Matters" series. "Motherhood is art. Friendship is art. Sisterhood is art. Marriage is art. Acts of compassion and mercy are art. If we look closely, we can see art everywhere."

For most of my life, I’ve been told I’m not creative; that art is not my strength. My stick figure drawings are unrecognizable, my paintings laughable. I’ve never sculpted a thing. Art class in 6th grade turned into a complete nightmare. My attempts at art, combined with the words spoken into my life, led me to believe that God created me with a lack of all artistic abilities and creativity.

My mom can take a collection of scrap materials and create a wreath fit for designer magazines. My sister can sit down with photographs and card stock to craft a scrapbook that looks professionally produced. I watch friends with their paintbrushes and empty canvases as they give little thought to colors and design. Their hands seem to move with natural grace as they effortlessly create jaw-dropping works. I listen to music, feeling swept away by rhythms and melodies I only dream of creating.

I wanted to create art, too, but I'd accepted that God gave me gifts outside that world. I was wrong. God, the creator of art, the ultimate artist--endless in creativity, design, and ideas--led me down a winding road to find the artist hiding inside my soul.

When my three boys were babies, I began to document our days on a blog. Blogging started as a way for me to keep our long distance family up-to-date. As time marched on, my writing shifted from documenting details to connecting God to those details to encouraging others through the sharing of our experiences.

When I sat at my computer to write, my fingers began to type, and I could sense God sitting next to me. He felt so present. Suddenly, a world that felt chaotic seemed to come into order. My fingers pounded key and my heart quickened as I heard his whispers. As I wrote about our life. I started to see his fingerprints covering our lives.

Life became a beautiful work of art. God used the art of writing to reveal to me that I’d been making art all along. I only failed to see it as art. My life is my art, and I express it every single day. God had created an artist within me. It just looked different than the artists I compared myself to.

Whatever the world says about my art, it doesn’t matter. He looked at his creation and said it is very good

Shouldn’t I have seen that his expressions of art would appear drastically different in each of us? This God who painted a world of sunsets that render one speechless; the God who formed the seasons with their sharp contrasts of life and death. Had I limited his artistic creations within myself?

We make art with our life: motherhood is art. Friendship is art. Sisterhood is art. Marriage is art. Acts of compassion and mercy are art.

Art is subjective, and to appreciate the art of our life, we have to search for the beauty. If we look closely, we can see art everywhere.

We are all the creators of art because we have been created by the creator of art. He has placed in us his masterpiece to create art daily. While we might not all sing, dance, paint, draw, or write, we all create art wherever we are.

What will your art look like today?