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.

Ritu Singh Pande

This might sound weird, but I knew that I had to pursue professional acting and filmmaking during the postpartum period following the birth of my second child. This moment was all the more significant because, at one point in my life, as an actor, I had deliberately chosen to leave behind the rigors and challenges of nepotism in the Mumbai (India) entertainment industry. While I absolutely cherish motherhood to the core, those days left me feeling unsettled, with questions lingering about whether this was the ultimate purpose of my life. I felt burdened by a responsibility that demanded a surrender of my individual or soulful explorations. It was a complex feeling, because as unsettling as it was, it was also a moment of renaissance and deep fulfillment, from which perhaps came this longing to share my energies, my life, and its experiences with more than just my own biological children. Read more>>

Ayden Nguyen

The first job I ever booked was dancing on stage with Justin Bieber on the Purpose Tour at the American Airlines Center. I think I was 6 years old. The stage was so big and there were so many people in the audience. But I had SO much fun and it just felt so natural, I wasn’t nervous at all. It was that moment that I knew this is what I want to do. Read more>>

JR Ritcherson

From the literal very beginning, out the womb thanks to my parents. Some people choose their career and others have their career chosen for them. I was like a dark-skinned, male version of the Olsen twins. From the time I was a baby I was in front of the camera as a baby model and doing commercials. A lot of people struggle most of their lives to discover what their purpose is or what they want to do with their lives, fortunately for me God blessed me from a very young age with the knowledge of what I love and what I want to do with my life, which is entertainment, and having a larger than life personality helped as well haha. My dad is in advertising and marketing some I did some of my first print and commercial work for his company. Read more>>

Renaissance Austin

I’ve have always known I wanted to work professionally in the world of the performing arts and entertainment since I was a toddler. I always tell people since I was aware I existed as a person. I never saw any other life for myself. Read more>>

Capucine Bourcart

I’ve had a passion for art since childhood. I never thought of becoming a professional artist; it happened gradually. I come from a creative family where music, drawing, painting, and crafting were integral to our daily life, serving as sources of inspiration. Initially, I pursued art as a hobby while working in press and marketing. Over time, my involvement in art grew, and I slowly began exhibiting my work. Read more>>

Tristan Cunningham

It was pretty clear to me from early on that I wanted to perform, and at the same time I was a very shy kid. I would create routines on our trampoline and then ask my mom to invite over the neighbors to watch me. I started gymnastics very young. I loved the physicality of it but hated the competition. My mom was such a blessing and saw this in me and found a touring youth circus for me to audition for (I know what are the odds) I auditioned at age 9 and got in at age 10. At age 10 I ran away with the circus and found my home in the circus ring! Read more>>

Sebastian Konnackel

The first time I knew that I wanted to pursue an artistic path professionally was during my second year of college while I was getting my Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication. That was the year when I began to take a lot of risks in the hope that they pay off. Despite not having ever owned a drum kit, I went out of my way and connected with a bunch of other musicians in Bangalore, started jamming with them at rehearsal spaces and eventually started playing shows and competitions. That’s when I realized that drumming made me happier than anything else in my life. Playing these shows also exposed me to the audio engineering side which piqued my interest as well. All of these realizations led me to begin planning to convert drumming and audio engineering from a passion into a profession. Read more>>

Zion Pullman

When I was around 6 or 7, I watched many cartoons growing up, I always thought to myself, how did they do that? For years in my youth, I would draw on paper, through comics, collages of characters. I originally wanted to be a scientist or an engineer, but the more I pursued the field of art, the more I realized, this was something I was meant to follow. Read more>>

Marifel Bermudez

I’d have to say I knew as young as 12 years old. I’ve always had interests for video games, fashion design, and creating/tinkering. I’d have to say I knew as young as 12 years old. I’ve always had interests in video games, fashion design, and creating/tinkering. Growing up my parent’s financials were tight but they were able to make sure my sister and I were taken care of in their own ways. When they’d ask us what we wanted for our birthdays or Christmas I was never really inclined to ask for a video game system or any sorts, instead, I’d ask for starter art supply kits. I’d spend hours learning the fundamentals of art and applying what I learned to each medium I picked up. Read more>>

Sade Champagne

I had dreams and visions as young as 4 years old doing the things and living the life I am today. Starting in elementary school, I used to read books aloud in front of the mirror and practice public speaking. I would also line up all my teddy bears and dolls along my bedroom wall and I would start preaching to them, singing and giving encouraging messages. In my mind I was visualizing myself performing for audiences and people all over the world. I always knew that this would be my life! Read more>>

Christopher Sky

When I was 4, my mom said I told her I wanted to be on tv. I believe, as someone really adventurous, it was one of many things I wanted to be growing up. I was always a performer though, from sports to choirs to being on dance teams. Performing was something so fun for me that I don’t think I processed it as a real profession. Especially growing up you hear how much people hate their jobs and can’t wait to get off work. You start to think that having a job isn’t a fun thing. And if it’s fun, it probably isn’t safe or realistic. So growing up I knew I wanted to perform and be on tv but I didn’t take it too seriously until I got into high school and took my first real theatre class. I had a great teacher who made sure it wasn’t all books and writing, but real performances and a real look into what it means to be an actor. We would do acting exercises, improv, and interact with each other in ways that were so vulnerable and expressive that it felt realer than real life. Read more>

Alec Durand

in 2014, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. Form a young age I was making art and creating things all the time. I’ve been doing sketches and drawings from my earliest memory. As elementary-aged child I got into formal art lessons and also took a few years of piano and guitar. While I enjoyed the feeling of success I got from progressing in my music lessons, it felt too much like school and there wasn’t any creativity happening. I was being classically trained so I only ever learned scales, theory, and wrote memorization type stuff. I didn’t make it far enough to learn songwriting or creating music of my own, so ultimately I quit out of boredom. As a young kid I loved listening to music and was exposed to an eclectic mix of genres and styles by both Mom and Dad. Read more>>

Josiah Smith

When I was young I would watch a movie then for the rest of the day I would pretend to be in the movie. I knew from a young age that I wanted to use my creativity somehow. Social media now a days has given me the opportunity to act and create the scenes. Read more>>

An.

I remember being back in middle school and there being a music program, nothing crazy, just like an after school program or something. I ended up joining the orchestra because my mom wanted me to do something. After our first real performance in front of the school, I was hooked. The feeling was so overwhelmingly good. I was playing 2nd violin and I think it was like a Christmas concert in the auditorium. I’ll never forget that. Read more>>

Kelichia

I’ve always had a passion for bringing out my creative talents. I’ve been writing stories, poems, and songs since my younger years. I would make up fairytales, in my head. I enjoyed tv shows and would wonder what steps I needed to take to follow such a path. I would challenge myself to see if I could guess the next lines or scenes. Most of the time, I was pretty spot on. I knew I could do great things with my imagination and talents. Read more>>

Justin Santora

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t have professional aspirations with art until the end of college. In high school and most of college, I was very pessimistic about the prospect of making a living from art. I basically viewed drawing as a party trick or a place to channel nervous energy in class, etc. I ultimately decided to study secondary education and studio art, but it wasn’t until I was student teaching and really not clicking with it that I started plotting an escape route. Read more>>

James Kanfoush

When I was a child. It all started when I was 3-4 years old. My Mom said I was able to pick up crayons and pencils and start to draw. I have a brother and three sisters, none of them can draw. Neither of my parents can draw. I knew then that I must have been blessed with this extraordinary talent. I started drawing everything and anything that interests me, which was just about everything. I was also reading comic books and watching tons of TV and movies, and i began to form my own creative thoughts and found out I could think of something from my imagination and was quickly able to draw what I saw in my mind’s eye. Read more>>

angela smaldone

I realized that I wanted to pursue an artistic career when I was very young, in high school and then started to do some research to make that happen. I left my small home town in southern Italy and built up my way in the animation cinema business, year after year, step by step. Read more>>

Diego Manrique

Since I was a child I always liked art, drawing and being creative was one of my qualities, I participated in drawing contests and won them but thinking and making a living from art was not in the cards since my family did not consider it since they always saw me with a university degree. That’s how I finished my degree in accounting but I had yet to finish what I was passionate about. I took several drawing and painting courses to enrich what was innate and a friend made me think about what I should do with what I was passionate about, so I quit. to my career and my office job and I started in art. Read more>>

Isabella Thatcher

I count myself very lucky to be a person who grew up constantly surrounded by the arts. I come from a family of musicians—my mother is an incredible violinist and composer and my father is a wonderful violist and conductor—so the arts were something that I was quite literally born into, and have shaped my life so completely because of it. As freelance musicians, my parents were always traveling across the country to perform in festivals, concert halls, and tours, and would take my siblings and me along with them when we were young. Read more>>

Linn Holmstedt

It all really started when I was just a wee little toddler. My dad loved playing me his favorite records and my mother was part of a gospel choir in Stockholm, with which she was performing and rehearsing with quite a bit at the time. She’d bring me with her and they would pass me around the choir as they were running their repertoire. I think my very first musical memory was my mother practicing the harmonies for ”Oh Happy Day” in the living room, urging me to sing along and I like to think that laid the foundation for my mild obsession with harmonies and love for background vocals. Read more>>