Are artists born or made? To help answer this question, we asked some of the most artistic folks we know to tell us about how they knew they were going to pursue an artistic or creative path. We’ve shared highlights below. 

Ryan Savopoulos

I started drawing graphite portraits when I was in high school. I had taken a few art classes and discovered my knack for realism. I started off drawing pictures of my favorite band members and other pop culture legends. By the time I got to college I started drawing pictures of my friends just for fun. Read More>>

Tianshi Wang

I think my path to becoming a creative professional was not defined by a single childhood moment, but by a long process of studying, exploring, and gradually understanding where I could create the most value. I studied Animation Directing at the Beijing Film Academy, which is widely regarded as one of the top film schools in China. Read More>>

nanakidme

When I was young, both of my parents worked, so I often spent a lot of time at home by myself. Because of that, I naturally had to find ways to entertain myself, and at some point, I started drawing more and more on my own. Whenever I was drawing, I would become completely immersed and lose track of time. Read More>>

Kaila Starks

There’s a lot of things I’ve wanted to be and different paths I’ve wanted to pursue in my life. But the one I always come back to is art. I knew when I was very young that I wanted to be a professional artist. I was always creating, whether it was drawing, painting, ceramics, fiber arts, even cooking. Read More>>

Paolah

I’ve had an artistic inclination for as long as I can remember, and from an early age I knew I would pursue something connected to art or design. I began taking formal art lessons at 13, and by 14 I had my first exhibition, where I received a merit mention —an experience that felt like an early hint I was on the right track. Read More>>

Tatiana Chams

From a very early age, I have always loved art and crafting. At the age of eight, I created a small business making jewelry and selling it at the pool during the summer. My Nanny (maternal grandmother) even made me some business cards. It would make me feel totally awesome when someone loved something I created so much that they wanted it. Read More>>

Kyung Kim

I’ve loved art for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t seriously consider pursuing it as a career until high school. When I was in elementary school, I loved drawing so much that I enrolled in an art academy. But the classes were very strict—we spent most of the time just practicing drawing straight lines on blank sheets of paper. Read More>>

Annie Clavel

Although creativity has always been part of my life, I did not begin my professional artistic path immediately. I first studied mathematics and computer science and taught mathematics in France and Tunisia. When I moved to the United States and settled in Long Beach, I gradually returned to painting, which had always been an important part of my life. Read More>>

Tim Tye

I’ve been a lawyer for 48 years. I’ve been writing songs since I was a teenager. In 2009 I met a guy on a bicycle trip who had released an album of his own material. It wasn’t very good, but it got me thinking that I could do the same thing. Read More>>

Charles Ivy

My calling toward a creative profession wasn’t a sudden realization; it was a slow, beautiful discovery that began in the heart of Schulenburg, Texas. I was only five or six years old, but I already knew that my favorite place in the world was at the kitchen table of my grandmother and first best friend, Gertrude Meyer Ivy. Read More>>

Elizabeth Wildes

I have had a passion for cinema since I was a child and I never questioned what I would do professionally because I’ve always known whatever I do in life had to revolve around film. Cinema has always been a big part of my life and that love has only grown through the years. Read More>>

Faith Omole

I remember being a very introverted child and using my hand to create things helped me kill time. I was always the kid in secondary school who would draw the skeleton and other assignments for my classmates because I enjoyed it. Read More>>

Shannon Meadows

When I realized I have only one life and I needed to start living it. My husband died unexpectedly. I had always painted, I started working on a series, which morphed into another series, and then I got a gallery and retired from my day job. Read More>>

Iva Hladis

I always knew I wanted to spend my adult life in the creative field, even though most of my young life was spent at the gym being a competing gymnast. I was finishing with gymnastics at the same time I had to choose my college education. My desire was to study arts, but the future took on a different turn. Read More>>

James Lenius

I’ve always had a deep hunger to create. When I was growing up it was definitely intertwined with the way I regulated and understood my emotions, and as a teenager I started honing in on the technical side of the process. Read More>>

Annie Reed

At a very young age, maybe around 3 or 4 years old, I would go to the pantry and bring out all the canned goods, line them up on the floor, take my little toy cash register, and sell them to my mother, carefully describing each item. Read More>>

Cassie Premo Steele

The summer before I started kindergarten, I used to put my head into the bright, flowery plastic book bag (it was the 70s) my mom had bought for me because I wanted to inhale the scent of school. I knew I wanted to be a writer. And I knew that school was what would get me there. Read More>>

Sabrea Aijalon

I think I was four years old. I grew up singing and was in a pretty musically inclined family but for some reason I didn’t picture pursing being an Artist professionally until after I graduated college. Read More>>

Annora Dong

The honest answer is that I didn’t have one single moment of clarity. Instead, it was a series of moments—some frustrating, some exhilarating—that slowly revealed I had no other choice. I grew up in Shanghai, attending a very traditional Chinese middle school where academic grades were the only currency that mattered. Read More>>

Brittany Walker

I knew I wanted to pursue a career in dance and choreography when I was 8 years old. I started dancing at 3 years old after seeing the Miami City Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ and was instantly enamored from then. My parents had a c.d. set of classical composers and I would put them on and just immediately create. Read More>>

Bella Eubanks

I’ve always been drawn to anything creative, especially in the beauty space. Even at a young age, I loved working with my hands and having a creative outlet. It was something that came naturally to me. As I got older, that interest continued to grow. In my teenage years, I started watching beauty influencers and became more aware of the artistry behind hair and makeup. Read More>>

Joey Brock

I’ve always been creative and I have a degree in Fashion merchandising but strangely enough, I didn’t pursue that career after I graduated. My plans took a detour! I ended up landing in the corporate world working as an Executive Assistant in Commercial Real Estate for Goldman Sachs and finally the Royal Bank of Canada for almost 20 years. Read More>>

Nikki ‘Cricket’ Rettman

If you ask my mom, she’ll tell you I knew I wanted to be an artist since I was six years old. Honestly, she’s not wrong. Creating has always been less of a hobby and more of a core personality trait — something I couldn’t turn off even if I tried. Read More>>