Identity Crisis of an Artist

Identity is a strange concept. Is it created, assigned, adopted? How malleable is it? How many identities can one individual have? Can you have too many?

When I became a teacher, I was hired, assigned a classroom and 150 students, and handed a curriculum. Boom. Teacher.

When I stood on a beach in Key West and repeated some vows, BOOM, I was pronounced a wife.

When I was handed my son in the delivery room, BOOM, mom.

Crazy how the actions of others can determine identity as well. My brother had a kid, now I’m an aunt. Your spouse dies, and now you’re a widow.

Where you spawn on this planet determines your citizenship, your social class, ethnicity.

I struggle to call myself an artist. I don’t “make a living” from my art. I haven’t shown my work in a gallery or show setting since college, I don’t have an online following to speak of, a specific style or medium I work in.

And yet.

I create work; I have a degree in fine arts; I’ve sold work I’ve created. I feel unsettled if I go for very long without making or creating.

It’s almost as though I’m relying on someone else to assign me that identity. Maybe that’s what is so unsettling. It’s having to own it and be willing to defend it. If I were to show in galleries, have money thrown at me, articles written, etc. but refused to claim the title for myself, could I actually be called an artist? Maybe it the ambiguity and the blurred lines around it. Artist (and for that matter, writer) lacks clear boundaries. Artist is a title you have to claim for yourself. And society in this country doesn’t love when women claim things for or prioritize themselves.