Finding your artistic voice isn’t always about developing a signature style. Sometimes, it begins with paying closer attention to the stories, experiences, materials, and ideas you naturally bring to your work.
In this post, The Turquoise Iris Journal curator Deborah Andress, founder of The Tattered Artist, shares what she has learned about trusting her own artistic voice through seasons of creativity, comparison, change, and starting again. Drawing from her love of mixed media and the worn, imperfect pieces that have become part of her work, Deborah offers an encouraging reminder: the things that make your art uniquely yours may already be there. You simply have to learn to recognize and trust them.
Learning to trust your own artistic voice may be one of the hardest things we do as creatives. It certainly has been for me.
For years, I looked at the work of other artists and studied what they were doing. I noticed their colors, their techniques, their compositions, and the things that seemed to make their work recognizable. There is nothing wrong with learning from other artists. In fact, I think we should. But somewhere along the way, learning can quietly turn into comparing.
I began wondering if I really had a style of my own. Was my work good enough? Was it recognizable? Was I simply borrowing little pieces from everyone else?
Eventually, I realized I was asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Does my art look like it belongs?,” I needed to ask: “Does my art look and feel like me?” That changed everything.
When Life Changes Your Artistic Voice
Oddly enough, one of the seasons that helped me understand my artistic voice was a season when I wasn’t creating nearly as much as I wanted to.
Over the past couple of years, life slowed me down in ways I never would have chosen. There were surgeries, rehabilitation, unexpected setbacks, and long stretches when my body simply would not cooperate with all the things my mind wanted to do. I am not naturally good at sitting still. I like movement. I like projects. I like knowing what is next. But there I was, doing a lot more waiting than creating.
At first, I thought my creativity had been put on hold. Looking back, I don’t believe that anymore. My hands may not have been painting as often, but something was still happening underneath the surface. I was thinking, watching, remembering, praying, and paying attention to what mattered and what didn’t. Roots were growing where no one could see them.
When I began creating again, I noticed something had changed. I felt less interested in trying to make art that looked like what I thought art was “supposed” to look like. I wanted to create things that carried a piece of my own story. That is when I began to understand that our artistic voice isn’t simply a painting style. It is shaped by what we have lived, what we notice, what we value, and what we choose to say through the things we create.
Why Tattered Paper Became Part of My Story
One of the most recognizable elements in much of my mixed-media work is something very simple: tattered paper. I use torn book pages, painted papers, fragments, handwriting, fabric, and other imperfect pieces that might easily have been discarded.
For someone unfamiliar with mixed media, it simply means creating a piece of art using more than one type of material. Instead of relying only on paint, I might layer paper, fabric, pencil, ink, and paint together on the same surface.
I love what those layers do visually, but I think I love even more what they represent. A torn edge already has a history. A faded page carries evidence that something came before. A scrap doesn’t have to be perfect to become part of something beautiful.
I have even begun cutting up artwork of my own that didn’t work, pieces I abandoned or paintings that simply never became what I intended. Instead of throwing them away, I cut them into strips and weave those pieces together to make something completely new.
There is something about that process that feels deeply familiar to me. Life doesn’t always leave us with neat, untouched pieces. Some chapters get torn. Some plans don’t turn out as expected. Some seasons leave marks. But I have learned that what looks unusable isn’t necessarily wasted.
My faith has taught me that, and eventually my art began saying it too. Somewhere along the way, those tattered pieces became part of my artistic voice.
When a Painting Becomes More Than a Painting
Sometimes we don’t fully understand what we’re creating until later.
I created one particular mixed-media painting for my daughter and her two daughters during a difficult season in their lives. The painting shows one larger angel standing with her arms around two smaller angels. At the time, my daughter was learning to stand in a new way for her girls. She was becoming stronger, growing in her faith, and discovering what it meant to be the steady person in their little family.
At almost the same time, I was walking through my own very different season. Our journeys seemed to run beside one another for nearly a year. Hers required tremendous movement and decision-making. Mine required an almost unbearable amount of stillness. Yet both of us were being changed.
When I look at that painting now, I don’t simply see three angels. I see strength, protection, faith, motherhood, and becoming. That is the difference between creating something that is technically pleasing and creating something that carries your artistic voice. Technique matters. We should learn it. We should practice it. But technique alone cannot tell your story.
Only I could paint that painting from that particular place because I had lived beside the story that inspired it. The same is true for you. No one else has your exact collection of memories, disappointments, people, places, losses, joys, ordinary days, and unexpected beginnings. That is not baggage you need to overcome before you become creative. That is part of the material that is uniquely yours.
How Comparison Can Quiet Your Artistic Voice
I don’t think most of us suddenly decide, “I am going to copy someone else’s creative life.” It happens much more quietly. We scroll. We notice what is selling. We see the colors everyone seems to be using. We watch another artist grow quickly and wonder whether we should change direction. Before long, we can become so aware of everyone else’s voice that we stop hearing our own.
I still look at other artists’ work. I still notice trends. I still learn new techniques. But I try to remember that inspiration and imitation are not the same thing. One expands your world. The other can slowly make your own world smaller.
At this point in my life, I don’t want to spend my time becoming a better version of somebody else. I want to become more fully myself. That means some of my work will be whimsical. Some of it may be more serious. Sometimes I paint coastal life. Sometimes angels. Sometimes women. Sometimes I use old paper that looks as though it should have been thrown away. There may be people who would tell me to make it all more consistent, but the consistency I care about most isn’t whether every painting looks alike. I want the heart behind the work to be recognizable.
I want people to sense hope. I want them to notice beauty where they might once have seen something broken. I want the work to suggest that another beginning is always possible. That is the artistic voice I am learning to trust.
Try This: A Simple Exercise to Discover Your Artistic Voice
If you’re struggling to recognize your own artistic voice, don’t begin by trying to define your “style.” Try this instead.
Pull out three pieces of your work that feel most like you. They do not have to be your best pieces or the ones that received the most compliments. Then ask yourself: What do these pieces have in common beyond technique?
Look at the colors, certainly, but go deeper. What subjects keep appearing? What emotions? What materials do you reach for repeatedly? What stories are underneath the work? What are you trying to say, even when you aren’t consciously trying to say anything?
Then finish this sentence: “I create because I want people to…” Don’t overthink it. Your answer may tell you more about your artistic voice than studying your color palette ever will.
Your Artistic Voice Is Allowed to Change
This may be the part I wish someone had told me years ago. Finding your artistic voice does not mean arriving at one permanent destination. We change. Our lives change. Our faith deepens. Our families grow. We lose things. We begin things. We discover interests we didn’t have ten years ago.
Why wouldn’t our art change too?
At this stage of my life, I am less interested in proving that I have developed the perfect recognizable style and much more interested in creating from a place that feels true. I want to remain curious. I want to keep experimenting. I want to keep cutting things apart and putting them back together differently.
I want to keep beginning again.
Perhaps that is what learning to trust your own artistic voice really is. It isn’t finally reaching the point where you never question yourself. It is learning that comparison doesn’t get the final word. Perfection doesn’t get the final word. Trends don’t get the final word. You do.
Today, when I sit down to create, I am trying to ask myself a different question: “What story has God entrusted to me that only I can tell?” Then I try to listen. Perhaps our most authentic work begins when we stop trying so hard to sound like an artist and finally become willing to sound like ourselves.
