MINDSET IS THE LENS

I came to art-making later in life. While I had always wanted to be an artist, it never seemed like an appropriate choice to dedicate my life and time to—at least, that was the message I had internalized and turned into a belief.

Life was filled with pleasing others, career pursuits, and forging a path that offered financial stability and responsibility. But the ache of not honoring my truth of being the artist I wanted to be was ever-present.

I finally stepped into the art world in my 40s when I decided to enroll in a three-year Fine Arts program. In many ways, those three years were transformative, but they also left me utterly unprepared for a sustainable art practice and career.

As a mature student, I felt equipped with all that was necessary to make this work—I had life experience, I was devoted to learning, and I had some skill. Thankfully, my art was picked up by a local gallery not long after I completed my diploma, and I felt that I was on my way.

Then something happened that I was ill-prepared for. I found myself stuck in cycles of unproductive—and sometimes downright debilitating—thinking. The weight of it made it almost impossible to make my work, and what I did manage to create often felt inauthentic.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was bumping up against limiting beliefs and a fixed mindset. I was spending far too much energy worrying about what others thought of my work, instead of focusing on my own thoughts and feelings. I wasn’t truly in the work—it felt performative rather than connected.

This is when resistance set in, and I struggled to get to the studio. I had so much noise inside me, so much to clear away before I could even begin. It was exhausting.

That’s when I began asking the question that changed everything for me: How could I want to make art so deeply and yet feel so much angst when I do?

I needed to find the answer to this conundrum, or I was going to quit. It had become that hard for me. So my pursuit began in earnest, and I soon discovered it was all about my mindset.

Our mindset is the lens through which we see and experience the world. It’s the container for our thoughts, beliefs, and values. Mindset guides us through our lives, informs our choices, shapes what we create for ourselves, and influences how we respond to challenges and opportunities. And it can either support our aspirations or limit them.

One of the most important things to understand about mindset is that it is changeable, not fixed. With awareness and practice, we can shift the lens through which we see and interpret our experiences, opening new paths and creating possibilities we may never have imagined for ourselves.

In art-making, mindset plays a huge role in how we meet our work and what we are able to access. If we are struggling with unsupportive thoughts and beliefs that whisper it’s not possible or you’re not good enough, that becomes our truth.

Our mindset underpins our choices and actions, as both people and artists. If it is filled with negative thoughts about ourselves, those thoughts become feelings that we believe—and what we believe informs our behaviours, and what we create.

As an emerging artist, I was not aware of the power of mindset in relation to art-making. It wasn’t part of the art curriculum in my diploma program. I felt completely alone in this struggle, assuming I was somehow flawed while others were flourishing.

Once I began paying attention to the quality of my thoughts—listening to the inner dialogue and reflecting on how it felt—I began to see the burdens I was carrying and placing in the way of my art-making.

I started to understand the role of resistance and comparison, and hope began to return. Perhaps it was possible for me to make art and find some peace in the process.

The more I dedicated myself to caring for my inner world of thoughts and beliefs, the more connection I found to myself and what I wanted to express in my work. The peace I was now able to access became a purposeful pursuit of something deeply meaningful. The act of creation itself became the point—and it offered me more than I could have ever imagined.

Mindset is the key to creating a space where we can be curious about ourselves. When paired with self-compassion, it allows us to truly know and accept ourselves. This is how we access authenticity—and making art from this place is the ultimate goal, and where the magic lies for us as artists.