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.

Stephen McNeely

After being stuck behind a cash register for eight years just to pay the bills i found myself wanting more out of life. I knew I had something special to offer the world other than good social skills and a funny personality. After I sold my first piece of art I was hooked on the new path of creating work that made someone feel something and needed to acquire the work itself. Read more>>

Eda Kachiri

I started really dancing in high school but it was always something I loved. It was after high school that I began training in Latin dance. I’m not sure when I decided to really pursue it as a career, I think it more so just happened. The more I trained and learned – the more I wanted to train and learn. Eventually my life decisions were being made around making sure I had time for dance. About 5 or 6 years ago is when I left my full time job to pursue dance full time – and it has been my life ever since. Read more>>

Abby Gumpper

I’m one of those cases of: once I got a taste for acting, I never looked back. In middle school, depending on our grade-point average, we were able to opt out of reading and into a chosen elective. On a whim, I chose the “drama” elective. Acting completely changed my life from the first moment I stepped on stage. My father had passed away from cancer a few years prior to the drama class, and acting finally gave me the tools to begin to heal. I think that’s the most beautiful thing about art, you heal yourself while showing others a path to healing. Performing also gave me the opportunity to be seen in a way that felt safe. Ironic, when you think about memorizing lines and shouting them a stage. But it gave me some authority over myself. While also giving me a chance to play other characters, and get to see other ways to live and walk through life. At the ripe age of 13, I was not able to put words to all of these changes, but I did know that I was hooked. Acting and creating was it for me, til death do us part. Read more>>

Tyrah Starke

When I graduated college in 2017, I started getting closer to God more and more, and that changed how I went about doing things. I always grew up in church and knowing the Lord, but it’s something about when you experience God for yourself and you want to be more like Him. I was trying to fit in with different social groups and dating the wrong men and I was just so tired of it. I had my fun, but at some point, you stop and realize that this isn’t the path that God wants you to take. I started maturing in my faith and learning more about relationship vs. religion. Read more>>

Justin Uesugi

I grew up in an immigrant household where pursuing art as a main source of income wasn’t even an option. Ironically, I grew up in Los Angeles where I was surrounded by the entertainment industry, but wasn’t allowed to pursue it full time. Instead, I was raised to choose a safe and stable career path (like becoming an engineer, doctor, etc), and everything else creative was to be at most an additional means of side income. I didn’t know it at first, but at the end of the day, my gut chose for me. Read more>>

Ella Samina

I realized around the age of 15 that i wanted to become an artist and healer professionally. Around that age, i was at the hight of my psychosis and became hospitalized. I began painting in the hospital and discovered how effortlessly i was able to move through my emotional discomfort and create something beautiful. I also began reading about a few traditional eastern medicine and healing practices such as reiki, a few years after i was hospitalized i decided to become a reiki practitioner and realized i wanted to combine healing and art in order to bring a space of sanctuary to those who need it. Read more>>

Luis Miguel Anaya

I am lucky to have found art and painting. Many people spend their whole lives searching for meaning in there life and I am happy to have found it at a young age. I spent my childhood and adolescence playing football or soccer. Art had never had a second thought in my head besides movies and the doodles in my notebooks. I quit playing football my third year of college and I was a bit lost. I had lost my first passion, my first love. Everything had some relation to the sport up to that point in my life and it left a giant void in my life when it was gone. I had already enjoyed reading as a teenager and watching movies, but to me that’s all they were. Read more>>

Shana Gagnon

When I was 9-years-old I saw the movie ‘My Girl’ in the theatre. That was it for me. I knew I wanted to be an actress. Later I discovered I wanted to make movies. Read more>>

Earlene Goins

I’ve always wanted to model since I was a preteen so in October 2020 that’s what I did. I drove 10 hours to West 38 a photographic studio in the heart of New York City. They gave me my first real on location experience working with a creative team and from there it was up . In March 2021, . I found a talent agency, took the course and was signed in July 2021 with their agency. Read more>>

Samantha Hastings

I was in elementary school when I decided that I no longer wished to be an archeologist, but an author! I loved to write and I was inspired by fictional characters such as Anne Shirley in ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L.M. Montgomery, Jo March in LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott, and Boots and Bruno in THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING AT MACDONALD HALL by Gordon Korman. The first two characters are pretty well known, but I think that fewer people know about Boots and Bruno books. According to the flap of my scholastic copy of the book, Gordon Korman wrote the first Boots and Bruno book when he was only in seventh grade! So, I wrote my first book in seventh grade: BEEHIVE BASKETBALL. Unlike Boots and Bruno, it wasn’t published. Which between you and me was probably a good thing. It did, however, keep me writing and practicing and it wasn’t until I was 35-years-old that I signed my first publishing contract for THE LAST WORD. Read more>>