The Thing About Artists

By Claire Cordonnier

You’ve probably had the satisfying experience of listening to a pop song and resonating with the lyrics. 

It’s comforting to know that you aren’t alone in your feelings. But what about for the artist? What's scary about sharing your art with people is that you are sharing with them something deeply personal. Good art is drawn from life and expresses something authentic and unique to you.

Good artists need to have “life” to draw from. They need to have had life experiences that have challenged and changed them emotionally.

What separates artists from other people? Do they have more interesting lives than the average person? Or do they feel emotions more strongly than other people in a way that compels them to express them?

In expressing their emotions, artists allow themselves to be vulnerable in a way that resonates with their audience.  I would argue that this kind of vulnerability doesn’t exist the same way in other fields in which the answer is more “objective.”

But what about the scientists and engineers that work in these "objective" fields? Don’t they feel the same need to express themselves? Perhaps their work allows them to cope with their emotions in a more indirect way.