7 artists on how they found their way into art

At Arts to Hearts Project, we have always believed that every artist has a story that started long before the exhibitions, the sales, the recognition, or even the confidence to call themselves an artist.

There was a first year. A year of figuring things out, making work without knowing where it would lead, questioning whether you were good enough, and choosing to continue anyway. For some artists, that first year was full of excitement. For others, it was confusing, lonely, or filled with self-doubt. And for many, it was probably a mix of all of it.

A few weeks ago, we asked our community a simple question: How many years have you been an artist, and what was your very first year really like? And reading through the responses, we realized just how much artists had to say about those early days.

Artists shared stories about making work after everyone else had gone to sleep, learning through mistakes, struggling to find their voice, celebrating their first sale, and wondering if anyone would ever care about what they were creating. Some were just beginning. Others looked back on first years that happened decades ago.

We shared a few of those stories, but there were so many more in the comments that deserved more than a quick scroll past. So we went back.

We read through the responses again and gathered some of the stories that made us stop, think, and remember how much courage it takes to begin something when you have no idea where it will lead. Because every artist we admire today once had a first year too.

And some stories are simply too good to leave behind in the comments.

Not everyone has a beginning. Some people just have a continuation.

Most artists can point to a moment. A class they took, a teacher who believed in them, a period in their life when everything shifted and they decided to commit. But then there are people for whom no such moment exists. Because there was never a before. Art was simply always there, woven into the earliest memories, present before there was even a word for what they were doing.

For Roy Cacek @mosaic_pixels, creating and drawing go back as far as memory does. The concept of being an artist did not form until primary school. But the doing was already happening long before that. And once she embraced it, she never let it go. Twenty plus years as a professional artist later, she is not reflecting on a long career with quiet satisfaction. She is excited about her new work. Still curious. Still becoming.

And we think that is the most beautiful thing about someone who has always been an artist. It never gets old for them. Because it was never a choice they made. It is just who they are.

The gap between who you were and who you are becoming is sometimes exactly where art lives.

Some people grow up in one place, with one language, one community, one version of normal. And some people grow up everywhere at once, always the new one, always adjusting, always looking at the world a little differently because they never had the luxury of taking it for granted. That kind of childhood does not always feel like a gift when you are living it. But it has a way of making artists.

Thais @purplechickenmail grew up in seven countries seeing everything through rose coloured glasses. When her family could not give her what she was looking for, she turned to her walls. To imagined conversations about art and acting and music. She always considered herself an artist. And yet it was only last year, last August, after ten years of not drawing or writing a single thing, that she finally took the leap. Opened her mail club. Started showing up consistently. Even on the days her day job pushed her to exhaustion.

She calls herself a small artist. A mini version of who she will be. And honestly? We find that more exciting than someone who has already arrived. Because she is not looking back at what she built. She is still in the middle of building it. And she loves every bit of the romance of that.

Art does not ask you to be okay first. It meets you exactly where you are

There are people who discover art. And then there are people who are simply born inside it. Who grow up with clay on the kitchen table and paint on the walls and creativity so woven into everyday life that it never occurs to them to question whether they are artistic. It is just the air they breathe. Until life steps in and asks them something harder.

Gillian Howes @sevenkeyscoaching was born into a family of makers. Her mother a potter, her father a commercial artist and painter. She became a hairdresser and expressed herself through art alongside it. And then she lost two pregnancies and could not have children. And in that grief, in that particular kind of loss that does not have enough language around it, she found sculpture. Not as a hobby. As proof that she could still create. That her hands could still bring something beautiful into the world.

Now she helps artists and hairstylists build successful businesses so they can focus on what they actually love. She took everything that art gave her in her darkest moment and turned it into something she gives to others.

That is not a career. That is a calling.

The gap between making art and showing art is where most artists live their whole lives

There is a particular kind of fear that lives between making something and showing it. You can spend years on the making side. Perfecting, refining, telling yourself you are not ready yet. And the longer you stay there the bigger the fear gets. Until one day you decide that the fear is not going away and you show up anyway.

Julianna @julianna_abstract art broke her fear exactly one year ago. Walked into her first exhibition and put her art in front of the world. Half the collection sold on the day. A local gallery approached her and showed her new collection of ten pieces. Four sold immediately. She is now working on six more. And somewhere in between all of that she made friends with buyers, which was something she had never even thought to hope for.

She calls the year magical, unexpected, humbling. And we believe every word of it. Because that is exactly what happens when you stop waiting for the fear to leave and start moving with it anyway.

She was terrified walking in. She is overjoyed looking forward. And the only thing that stands between those two versions of her is one decision she made a year ago to simply show up.

Art saved her once. She spent the rest of her life making sure it could save others too.

There are teachers who teach a subject. And then there are teachers who teach from experience. Who stand in front of a classroom knowing exactly what it feels like to need what they are giving. Who never let the subject become just a subject because for them it was never just a subject. It was a lifeline. And they remember exactly what that felt like.

Wendy Greaves @wendy.greaves.textiles found Art Textiles at 15 because of an amazing teacher and a difficult situation she needed to get out of. Art college followed. And then 31 years of teaching Fine Art Textiles while never once stopping her own practice. Because she believed something deeply. That true art educators must keep creating themselves. That you cannot ask students to embrace the vulnerability of making something if you are not willing to do it alongside them.

Now she is a full time artist. The happiest she has ever been. And she credits her past students for giving her the inspiration to keep pushing her own ideas forward. She gave them a door. And somewhere along the way they helped her walk through one of her own.

We think that is what teaching looks like when it is done with everything you have.

Making things is not a phase for some people. It is just who they are at every age.

Not everyone can tell you when they became an artist. But some people can tell you they never were anything else. That the urge to make things was there before they had language for it, before they had training for it, before they had any idea that what they were doing had a name. It was just what their hands wanted to do. And so they did it.

Kathy Rhodes @kathy_tedesco has been creating since the days of eating crayons and finger painting and finding curious ways to make things out of whatever was in front of her. At 59 she is still doing exactly that. Still creating. Still finding new ways. Still curious. The only thing that has changed, as she herself points out, is that she has stopped eating the crayons.

And honestly that kind of continuity, that unbroken thread from childhood to now, is one of the rarest and most beautiful things an artist can have. Not a dramatic turning point. Not a reinvention. Just a person who has always known what they are and kept showing up for it anyway. Decade after decade after decade.

The world will always have a reason for you to choose something other than art. The artists who last are the ones who choose it anyway.

There is a version of growing up that a lot of creative people know. Where someone, a parent, a teacher, the world in general, looks at what you love and tells you it is not practical. That you need something real. Something stable. Something that makes sense. And so you go and you build that life. You become responsible and capable and accomplished. And the whole time, quietly, the art never leaves.

Stacy Cantrell @stacycantrell_art learned to crochet from her great grandmother at four years old. Society told her being an artist was not practical. So she became a musician, a computer programmer, a mother, a business owner. She made art the whole time. It was not until 2010 that she started truly listening to her inner needs. To what had always been asking for more space.

Now her work brings every single one of those paths together. Her unique medium, sculptural crochet, carries the skills and life experiences of every version of herself she has ever been. She calls herself a world builder. Her works tell stories, fantastical and historical. And they are made by someone who has been building worlds, quietly and persistently, since she was four years old.

She appreciates every path she took. But she always knew where she was headed.

What we noticed reading through all of these was not how different the journeys were. It was how similar the thread running through them all felt.

Some of them have been making art since before they could explain what they were doing. Some walked away for years and came back. Some were told it was not practical and did it anyway alongside everything else life asked of them. Some took one terrifying leap just last year. And every single one of them, wherever they started and however long it took, arrived at the same place. A life they could not imagine living without art in it.

That is what this question was really asking. Not how many years. But how deep. And the answer, every single time, was all the way.

If you want to read through all the responses we received, we have linked the original post below. There were so many more beautiful answers than we could fit here and every one of them is worth your time.

To everyone who shared something so personal, thank you. What started as one simple question became a conversation we kept returning to long after we thought we were done. That happened because of your honesty. And we do not take that lightly.

We will keep asking. About your process, your beginnings, your creative blocks, and what keeps you showing up even on the days it feels impossible. Because those are the conversations that remind artists they are not alone in this.

And if you are not already part of our community on Instagram, come find us there. The next question we ask might just be the one that tells your story.