Calling Myself an Artist

I could say the others easily enough. Lawyer: I had the training. Strategist: I had the track record. Entrepreneur: I had the scars. But “artist” caught in my throat every time, as though I would be found out, as though someone would appear and ask to see my qualifications.

I had spent my life around beauty and making. I chose fabric and colour with real care. I built spaces the way some people compose music. I noticed the fall of light in a room and could not rest until it was right. And still I would not use the word, because I had quietly decided that “artist” was a title you earned by being finished, by being flawless, by producing a body of work grand enough to justify the claim.

What changed was not that I got better. What changed was my understanding of the word.

I came across the idea, somewhere in my reading, that being an artist has almost nothing to do with what you produce, that it is not an achievement to be certified but a way of paying attention. Artistry as care. As noticing. As the willingness to keep making something a little truer, a little more alive, even when no one has asked you to. Especially then.

By that definition, I had been an artist all along. I just hadn’t let myself say so.

There is a particular relief in this reframing, and also a particular discipline. If artistry is not about perfection, then I no longer have to wait to be flawless before I claim it, which is freeing. But if it is about attention, then it asks something of me every single day: to keep noticing, to keep caring about the small things, to refuse to let “good enough” quietly become the standard. The imperfection is not the enemy. A handmade thing carries the mark of the hand that made it; the slight unevenness is where the life is.

KaraSpace, I now understand, is the largest thing I have made, and it is an act of artistry more than an act of business. The garden, the welcome, the way the light comes in, the care in a cup of coffee placed just so. None of that is on the balance sheet. All of it is the work.

So I have started saying the word. Not as a boast, and not as a finished claim, but as a description of how I move through the world: with attention, with care, with a willingness to keep making things more alive. I am a lawyer. I am a strategist. I am an entrepreneur. And I am an artist, all at the same time, and no longer apologising for any of it.

Being an artist is not about what you produce. It is a practice. A way of being.

Is there a word you have been waiting to feel worthy of, one you might simply be allowed to claim, starting now?