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.

Seun Adegoke

I knew I was a creative from the age of 10. I went to boarding school in Africa and back then I would assemble all my friends and share fictional stories with them. They would be so attentive from start to finish and I had an ever growing audience. That was when I realized that I have the gift of entertaining in me. Read more>>

Devyn Moon

To be honest I can’t really recall an exact moment where I had an epiphany like that. You know all those cliché motivational posters in school or cheesy Disney films that say “do what makes you happy!” I really think I believed that through and through growing up and I still do! Im in love making music, creating and the adventures that came with it. It sounds super weird but I feel like I always knew like I really can do something with this. I see myself doing this forever and growing with it. So why not ! Read more>>

Haley Femrite

As far back as I can remember, I loved being creative. I was always drawn to art. It wasn’t until my AP art class in high-school, that I knew I had to find a way to do it professionally. That class had a huge impact on me and changed me in so many amazing ways. I matured at a young age and have never really had much in common with people my age. Especially in high-school! But in that class I found a group of fellow artists whom I connected with. Everyday was a blast! They were, and are to this day, extremely talented. My confidence in my art grew tremendously. Read more>>

The Bitcoin Fairy

I’ve always been around the arts, whether it was a school recital, learning to play an instrument, singing, and dancing. It was simply inevitable! When I was six years old my late grandmother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up as I pressed my toy stethoscope against my singing Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez doll while the “No scrubs” song played back into my ears, I simply replied “a doctor and a singer.” Many years passed and I did enter the medical field because I love helping people but music always called me back, I put my heart into dancing, singing, rapping and acting. To this day, I’m overjoyed knowing that there’s people who look up to me just from by being myself. Read more>>

Nhayah Goode

The first time I knew I wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally was when I was a child. I knew I could write AND sing when I was in elementary school and as I got older, I knew I didn’t necessarily want to work for anyone else permanently. However, my entire family is pro government jobs and a 9 to 5 period. Everyone is military, police, etc. Read more>>

Ke’Yanna Nelson

The first time, I knew I wanted to take the creative route has to be the first day of 2nd grade. My teacher passed me our reading text book and it had an amazing colorful painting on the cover. When I saw that I immediately knew I wanted to create for a living, at first I thought I wanted to be a painter. When I started painting I was not that good, then I started to draw and drawing became more natural for me to express the creativity that I had holding inside of me. Read more>>

Casey Kelly

I was a pretty independent child and spent most of my alone time creating with whatever was at my disposal. I really enjoyed exploring all art forms, but was very influenced by the creativity of both of my grandmothers and my dad. My dad’s mother painted ceramics, did cross stitch, and was incredibly fashionable. I spent a lot of time with her until she passed away when I was 11. We painted and shopped together nearly every weekend. She taught me a lot about fashion as a form of self expression and taking risks. My mom’s mother sewed, knitted, did needlepoint, and worked in the apparel industry. Read more>>

Cynthia Welch

In the 1970s, when I was in high school, I discovered that I had a talent for music, poetry and the arts. Everything I saw affected my senses; and I had no problem sharing what I saw and felt with others through art. After I graduated high school, I led a totally different life… with a husband, nine children and aa very full life. I started businesses; then, opened a store that made gift baskets and other handmade items in the 1990s. My husband became ill and we closed the store. Read more>>

Jared Lazar

I’ve always had a creative base. I grew up in a house where my mom was constantly creating. A lot of it was taking dilapidated furniture and refurbishing these pieces and selling them in antique malls in California’s Central Valley and Central Coast. I’ve always been grateful to have half of her creative brain. Read more>>

YoungSauceDaGod

I would have to say at the age of 12. I knew I wanted to write and perform music professionally. I use to recite alot of hip hop and R&B songs by some of my favorite artists and shortly after I begin to create my own music and that’s how my passion for music started. Read more>>

Nina Frink

I was a sophomore in High school and on my way to audition for All-Region in the state of Texas on my flute. We just moved up to 5A (a bigger school ranking which meant more and most likely better competition). I was stopped by a train that decided to stop on the train tracks which apparently is a common occurrence. Once I arrived to the school that we were auditioning at, I ran inside to find out where the audition room is. At this time I am already late for my audition. As soon as I got to the room, I wasn’t able to get anyone’s attention, due to the door being covered by newspaper. Read more>>

Cecilia Wong Kaiser

From the time I was little, I thought I would be an artist. Drawing was my superpower as a child: it helped me make friends (so many kids thought it was cool that I could draw!), and it helped me understand the world around me. I am ethnically Chinese and was born in Burma (Myanmar), and growing up in South Carolina and Tennessee in the 1970s and 80s, I was often one of the only persons of color in any given classroom, and definitely the only person with my background; my ability to draw was another positive distinction that probably helped me appreciate that being different wasn’t bad. Read more>>

Steph

I was 11 or 12. I drew a cartoon of our math teacher (naked) on the blackboard before class started. Everyone laughed (except our math teacher). That’s when I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist. Read more>>

Lyric TheArtist

s around me. I was always drawing & everything today started then. Before I even knew what a tattoo was I was doing pen drawings on myself & lot of my sports teammates & classmates would pay me to draw “pen tattoos” on them…I ended up being given a tattoo magazine & that’s when I decided I was going to become a tattoo artist. I had this pair of navy blue suade Jordan 1’s & my step mother put them in the washing machine & the suade faded. So I took a sharpie & colored the panels black, & drew my name on graffiti letters on them. Read more>>

Trey Zorns

I will say that moment for me would be back in my Senior Year of College. As part of our Senior Capstone we had to successfully put together a Solo Art Exhibit. It really allowed me the opportunity to experience all of the behind the scenes work that we don’t normally see when going to an Art Exhibit. Starting with a vision for my show and then putting it all together sparked a more serious and next level mentality within me. Seeing my Family, Friends & Supporters viewing my artwork all at once and receiving high praises from everyone there made me want to experience this feeling more often. Read more>>

Justin Kalin

As long as I can remember, I’ve always known I’d somehow end up in the arts. As a kid I use to perform entire musical numbers for family and friends (I actually cut out little tickets and wouldn’t let them in my room without them so I was pulling double duty as a bouncer too). Once I realized I wasn’t destined to be a pop star, I pivoted to writing, sure I’d be a novelist or something. I found theatre in middle school but didn’t really get serious about it until I went to college. I was too shy to perform once I got into high school so it’d been a few years, but I went to an audition my freshmen year as moral support for a friend and got roped into auditioning too and the rest is history. I went from sociology and pre-law to theatre and have 0 regrets. Read more>>

M. Christine Landis

My earliest memories include creating art. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to spend my time drawing, painting or making something from raw materials. But as a teen, I began to look into options for some kind of artistic or creative career, and I started being told things like, “They don’t call them starving artists for nothing!” “You can make art when you retire!” “Art is just for hobbies” “You need to be a secretary!” And so began an aggressive campaign to steer me away from art and toward what my parents considered a more appropriate and productive path. Read more>>

Deonte Bolden

After the passing of my older disabled brother in 2006, I suppressed a lot of emotions while going through a dark period of depression, so dark to the point where I contemplated suicide. A suicide letter turned into me writing and expressing my emotions while writing poetry, that then lead to my purpose which was writing scripts and even books that while inspire generations to come. Read more>>

Eddie Eaton

Music always felt like home to me no matter what. Almost anything I did when I was younger I always had music playing, or was playing music. I had tried to dabble in a couple sports like soccer, lacrosse and baseball but nothing gave me the feeling that drums did. The moment I decided I wanted to be a drummer was in the beginning of 5th grade. I haven’t stopped since. Throughout high school I was asked “why don’t you play basketball? you’re 6’4”!” or “why don’t you play football?” It’s because it just isn’t for me. Read more>>

Ashlyn Baker

I could tell from an early age I loved makeup, fashion and all things beauty. I have a vivid memory of myself in the 6th grade wearing my mother’s black eyeliner, going to school and the kids making fun of me for wearing makeup. It didn’t bother me being that this was something I really liked and made me feel different, which I found confidence in. About a year or so later, I then began to collect Maybelline’s Baby lips chap sticks. My collection was HUGE! From then on I knew I had a passion for beauty and makeup. Read more>>

Joanne West

In the early 80’s after attending school for automotive technology I was hired at General Motors Proving Grounds as a test driver. After a while the fun job of going round and round ( literally a test track ) was no longer challenging so I returned to school part time to study business to open my options for advancement at GM. Philosophy and psychology held great interest for me. When my mother died at the age of 49 I began to search for deeper meaning in life. Read more>>

Alejandro Rowinsky

I never knew, nor thought much about that. There were two special moments that led me to follow this path. The first one when I was 16 years old, I went to the movie theater to see the documentary film “Imagine: John Lennon”. The film chronicles Lennon’s life and musical career, and at that point I felt something new inside me. I was fascinated by the music, the work, and the life of this great artist. And from there I made the decision to start playing guitar. Read more>>

Alice Stone-Collins

My grandmother was my first art teacher. She owned a Howard Finster painting that hung in her dining room above the table. The piece is of a man holding the globe on his shoulders with water from the world’s ocean flowing over his body. It wasn’t uncommon to find works of art throughout my grandmother’s home in rural Georgia. Pieces of folk and modern art filled the walls and corners of her home. She taught art for over forty years and filled her life with paintings, sculpture, and sketches, but it was the simple line quality and crude childlike nature of the Finster piece that fascinated me. Read more>>

Alex Kiester

I wanted to be a writer since the age of, like, seven. Some of my earliest memories, in fact, are of wandering around my neighborhood barefoot while narrating fictionalized versions of my life in my head. All my old diaries are full – not with writing of my childhood – but made-up stories. Read more>>

Perla Gonzalez

In our full time careers we have the opportunity to get really creative. At one particular event, we decided to decorate with balloons and instantly knew this was something that could feed our creative brain. We became obsessed with the idea of creating art through balloon work and turning this into a successful business opportunity. One day we decided to start an Instagram page and the rest was history! Read more>>

Vanessa Villarreal

The decision to pursue art professionally came to me pretty recently (seven months ago) after experiencing my mental health rapidly declining as a result of juggling graduate school and a very demanding job. As a result of being a student and full-time employee, I did not have the time nor energy to create, putting my creativity and small business on the back burner which absolutely pained me. In an effort to bring LDC back for a moment, I decided to participate at a local market to sell the few items that I had left from months before and to my surprise, it was a success. Read more>>

Shawni Darling

I think I’ve always leaned toward the creative, though in my mind, I wasn’t artistic, and I never really considered an artistic path for myself. Artistic is painters, people who draw, sculptors, those were artists. I was a DIYer or a crafter, but I was always fascinated with watching people create and it made my hands itch to create something, but it wasn’t until 2003 that I found an outlet for that itch. I was a stay-at-home mom of 2 kids at the time, and my husband told me I had to get out of the house, that I needed a break. Read more>>

Dede Lomenick

I always loved comedy and since I was in my 20s I wondered if I had what it took to make people laugh. I studied how to write a good joke. I learned about timing, connecting with an audience and I loved the process. But like many people – real life has a way of redirecting us and convincing us that we can’t do it. The very first time I walked on stage to do stand up comedy, I was a 50 year old married pastor’s wife with three kids – two of whom still lived at home. Not the most ideal setting for a career in comedy. Read more>>

Abigail Owen

I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was a child and got into reading. I won my first award when I was eight, and that only fed the bug. I wrote short stories for years, until high school when mean girls made me feel weird for loving to write. That was when I put writing aside for a while. It wasn’t until after college that I picked it back up again. (Although I got a degree in English, so I think it was always in the back of my mind.) In my twenties I started and never finished probably thirty books. Read more>>

Donna O’Donnell Figurski

I stumbled into writing in the early 1990s. By then, I had been teaching either first or third grades for about 10 years. Because children are like sponges and soak up their environment with their innate curiosity and their eagerness to learn, I knew this was the perfect time to instill the love of writing into them. So that became my mission. Read more>>