How I Became an Artist (Even Though It Didn’t Look Like It at First)

I’m an artist. And when people hear that, I think they assume I’ve always known it. That I probably grew up with a sketchbook in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. That I visited galleries as a kid and spent hours copying the masters.

Well… maybe. But not really. Not in the way you'd think.

I spent most of my childhood outside. We ran barefoot through the neighborhood, rode our bikes everywhere, caught tadpoles, and named baby ducks. We weren’t trying to be anything—we were just creating whole worlds from nothing. And now that I look back, I see it was all imagination. All early art.

I wasn’t the “art kid.” I didn’t enter contests. I didn’t have a favorite artist. I wanted to be a teacher or a model—which is honestly kind of embarrassing to write now, but probably a product of my 80s upbringing. The point is: I had no clear artistic ambition. Just a deep love of wonder, beauty, and making things.

I took an art class my senior year of high school, just to check off a credit. But something about it felt alive. I remember thinking: Oh. This is what it feels like to wake up to something. I still have my self-portrait collage from that class—and I treasure it.

Even then, I didn’t pursue it. I showed up at the college art department with no portfolio—just hope and a shaky explanation. I was turned away quickly. I didn’t belong, at least not in the way they needed me to.

So I did what a lot of people do. I picked something practical. I studied dental hygiene. It wasn’t creative, but it was solid. Something people understood.

Years later, after I was married and working, my grandfather-in-law invited me to take some art classes with him. I was the youngest person there by decades, sitting beside retirees learning how to paint. We copied other artists’ work—classic landscapes, flowers, Italian villas. I got better. Learned to mix color, pay attention to proportion, maybe even squint at shadows.

But still, I didn’t feel like an artist. I felt like someone who liked art. Someone who could be “pretty good” at it. Someone dabbling.

The truth is, I didn’t start believing I could really be an artist until two things happened:

1. I got a mentor

2. I saw art up close

My mentor told me something simple that changed everything: "Make the work only you can make."
Not what you think others want. Not what sells. Not what looks impressive.
What’s in you.

I had never thought of art that way—like something as personal as DNA. That it could come from your own life, your memory, your faith, your story.

Around the same time, I started traveling more and visiting art museums. I remember seeing original works by Van Gogh, Hodler, and Monet. Paintings I’d only seen in books suddenly felt human—messy, alive, textured, flawed, holy. I stood in front of paintings that made me cry. Not because they were perfect, but because they made me feel something true.

And no—I hadn’t known these artists my whole life. I didn’t grow up dreaming of seeing them in person. But when I did, they stopped me in my tracks. They changed me.

That’s when I realized that art doesn’t have to be tidy or impressive. It just has to be real.

Now I paint as much as I can in the margins of real life—while raising kids, managing a home, and running a business. It’s not romantic or easy. It’s built on discipline, quiet study, and staying awake to the beauty around me. I paint voraciously. I read and research and sketch. I keep learning.

I didn’t become an artist all at once. I became one slowly—through detours and surprises, through copywork and curiosity, through mentors and museums, through motherhood and faith.

And maybe that’s the real story behind most artists.
Not instant talent.
But the long, quiet work of becoming.

thanks for listening-Amanda