Dear friend,

One of the challenges of being an artist is living in the tension between confidence and growth.

What I mean by this is that to create good art, you have to do it with confidence, not doubting your paint brush mark, but placing down paint with confidence and assurance, not fear. When you create with fear of messing it up, or unsure about your paint brush stroke, that paint you put on the canvas holds that uncertainty.

On the other hand, if you get too confident (or arrogant), you are in danger of becoming stagnant in your ability and natural talent.

I was encouraged by an email I got the other day from a professional artist of over 30 years. She said that it's better to not be naturally talented at all, but work hard to gain skills as an artist. This is because it's easy to lean back on the natural talent and stay where you are, expecting art to come easy without much effort or work. This an make a lazy artist, a privileged artist who expects it to come easy.

This encouraged me because I don't think I'm naturally talented. Creatively minded, sure. But naturally talented? No. All my ability to create art is from years of creating artwork that was so bad it got thrown away immediately. And from hours and hours of painting and re painting and starting over.

I've worked hard to get where I'm at with my artistic ability, but I am not done. I have no desire to stagnate here. I know I have far to go. I see some things take me longer and I'm unsure when I paint them. I need to practice those things. I see somethings come easy, so I push myself to take them further, make them have more depth, or paint them at a challenging angle.

I don't think you can really be a good artist if you stop growing. If you stop trying to master your mediums more, if you stop finding inspiration, if you stop practicing.

But there has to be enough confidence to laugh at yourself when you try to paint a girl and she looks more like a monkey than a girl.

Like many things in life, there's a weird tension we have to live with between confidence and growth. We have to be brave enough to try new things and step out of our comfort zones, and scared enough to do our best and learn along the way.

I don't know about you, but I have a long list of ways I want to grow this year. I want to have significantly more mastery of my painting mediums by the end of the year. I want to be significantly more organized. I want to be significantly deeper in my time in the Word and in prayer.

As you think about how you want to grow, don't forget how far you've come, and how many adventures you have ahead. Trust the Lord with the tension of growing but not grown.

~Isabel Grace

P.S. As you read this, the Starlight print club letters should be almost ready to go out in the mail (weather permitting) on Monday! I can't wait for you all to get your letters and to hear what you thought about them. I pray that your heart is encouraged and you're pushed to Scripture and prayer.

As always, if you want to check out some of my original artwork that is currently available you can see that HERE. And you can check out my prints HERE.