I Keep Muting Art Videos

A few months ago, I joined an Artist’s Way group here on the mountain.

If you’ve never read The Artist’s Way, and you identify as a blocked creative or a blocked artist, it’s worth the experience. There are seasons when we need someone to sit beside us and say: yes, you’re creative. Yes, you’re allowed. Yes, the thing you make doesn’t have to be good to be worthy of your attention. Yes, the awkward beginning counts. The badly drawn thing counts. The tiny gesture counts.

There was a time in my life when I needed that medicine.

Twenty-something years ago, I was living inside that ache of wanting to make something and not knowing how to begin, how to keep going, or how to trust what wanted to come through me.

So when I joined this group, I thought perhaps I was returning to something important.

And I was.

Just not in the way I expected.

The people were lovely. The room was lovely. There was something genuinely tender about being with other people who wanted to talk about creativity and process.

But very quickly, I realized: this isn’t my ground anymore.

And that’s not a dismissal. I mean it with awe.

I tried to read through the book again and felt almost no recognition. Not because the book had nothing to offer, but because I was no longer the woman I’d been when I first needed it. I didn’t feel like a blocked creative. I didn’t feel like someone waiting for permission. I didn’t feel like someone trying to convince herself that making something counted.

And that realization landed in me as a kind of homecoming.

Arrival, like standing in the doorway of an old house and realizing you don’t live there anymore, but you can still bless the version of yourself who did.

I have so much tenderness for her.

But I’m not her anymore.

This explains something I’ve been feeling lately whenever I go onto YouTube or Instagram looking at art.

I love looking at art. I love seeing what people make. I love the beauty of it, the wild variety of it, the way each person develops a private language through paint, paper, image, thread, color, texture, mark, shape. I love seeing how a hand moves when it knows something the mind hasn’t translated yet. I love watching beauty emerge through someone else’s particular way of seeing.

What I don’t love, and this is probably a hot take, is the constant need to talk over it.

The explanation. The narration. The endless instruction. The “here’s what I’m doing now.” The “let me show you how to tap into your creativity.” The “here are five ways to use this pencil.” The “don’t be afraid to make a mess.” The “remember, anything can be art.”

And listen. It serves a purpose.

Just like The Artist’s Way serves a purpose.

There are stages of the creative path where we need exactly that. We need someone to demonstrate. We need someone to expand our sense of what’s possible. We need to learn how tools work. We need to see someone else make a mess and survive it. We need to hear, again and again, that what we create doesn’t have to please anyone else in order to be real.

I was there.

I needed that.

So this isn’t a condemnation of teaching. It’s not a dismissal of people who make tutorials, people who need tutorials, or people who are generously sharing what they know. There’s real value in that. There’s real kindness in that.

But the oversaturation is exhausting.

The amount of everything on the internet is exhausting now. The endless talking. The endless explaining. The endless helpfulness. The endless conversion of every private practice into public-facing value.

And I think the deeper question is this:

What’s happening to the creative life we’re all talking about when we’re constantly required to package it in a way that provides “value” on the internet so we can sell something?

Because that’s the part I feel my whole body resisting.

I’ve done so much work in my life to put down excessive noise. Internal noise. Inherited noise. Cultural noise. Old voices that weren’t mine but had taken up residence in me anyway. I’ve worked very hard to know the difference between my own inner authority and the outer gaze pressing itself into my nervous system.

That’s part of why I can be in my art practice now without feeling tyrannized by the imagined watcher.

And maybe that’s why, when I hear so much of this creative content online, it doesn’t land as helpful in my body anymore.

It lands as noise.

It’s not because the person has nothing to offer or the teaching has no purpose. It’s because underneath the language of creativity, I can often feel the hustle and need to sell.

I can feel the pressure to turn the act of making into a product, a lesson, a brand, a funnel, a reason to subscribe, a reason to click, a reason to follow, a reason to buy.

And at some point, we have to ask what that’s doing to us.

Sure, you created a video. Sure, you’re talking about creativity. Sure, you’re painting or drawing or collaging on camera.

But if the creative act is constantly interrupted by the demand to sell, instruct, perform, and prove value, what frequency are we actually in?

Is that the creative frequency?

Or is that the market speaking through the mouth of the artist?

That’s the thing I can’t stop feeling.

We’ve created an online culture where the artist isn’t only expected to make the thing, but to document the making of the thing, explain the meaning of the thing, teach the process of the thing, post the thing, promote the thing, and then turn the thing into another thing so the algorithm remembers she exists.

The artist becomes the teacher.

Then the seller.

Then the business.

Then the content department.

Then the audience-growth strategist.

Then the person working her ass off for clicks and follows and likes and engagement so she can prove that her creative life deserves to exist.

And I want to ask, with my whole chest:

• What are we doing?

• What are we doing to the art?

• What are we doing to the artist?

• What are we doing to the private, sacred, formative, strange, unruly, deeply nourishing life of creativity when we insist that its validity must be measured by how well it sells?

Because this isn’t new, of course. Artists have always had to contend with patrons, galleries, buyers, markets, gatekeepers, representation, status, competition, money. There’s always been pressure around who gets seen, who gets supported, whose work is considered valuable, whose art is taken seriously.

But social media has intensified something.

Now the market doesn’t just meet the finished piece.

The market enters the studio.

The market watches over the shoulder.

The market asks for a better angle.

The market wants a caption.

The market wants a hook.

The market wants you to explain why this matters in the first three seconds or people will scroll.

And then we wonder why the creative life feels so thin, so frantic, so overexposed, so weirdly disconnected from the very thing it claims to be devoted to.

I’ll click on an art journal flip-through, or a painting process, or someone making a collage, and within seconds I mute them.

I. Mute. Them.

It’s not that I don’t respect them or because they have nothing valuable to say. But because I don’t want to hear anyone talk over the art anymore.

I want to receive the art.

I want to be nourished by it.

I want the color. The gesture. The private language. The moment when the hand hesitates, then chooses. The way one shade touches another. The way an image emerges before anyone has decided what it means.

Sometimes I’m watching while doing something intentionally mindless. Filing papers. Going through mail. Ripping open the spam envelopes and tossing them into the recycling. I want art around me while I do these ordinary little tasks of being alive. When I’m not in a museum, I’m online looking at other people’s art because I love it. I genuinely love it.

But what does it say that I often have to mute the artist in order to receive the art?

That’s the question.

What does it say that the art can nourish me, but the required narration around the art depletes me?

What does it say that the silence feels more intimate, more generous, more alive?

There’s something about constant explanation that creates a rupture for me now.

I can feel the split.

A person is making something beautiful, but they’re also explaining it, performing it, contextualizing it, making sure the camera can see it, making sure the audience understands it, making sure the content is useful, engaging, monetizable, digestible. Their attention is divided into a thousand little obligations.

And yes, I know many artists who teach online probably have their own silent, private, intimate practice somewhere else. I hope they do. I hope every person who makes content about their art has a place where no one is watching, no one is asking, no one is waiting, no one is being taught, no one is being converted into audience.

Because the other way is exhausting.

And I know it because I’ve tried to film myself in process.

I’ve set up the camera. I’ve tried to make a video of myself drawing or painting or moving through a page. And immediately, the chatter enters.

Is this the right angle? Is the lighting okay? If I put my hand here, am I blocking the view? Is this interesting enough? Is this taking too long? Should I explain what I’m doing? Will anyone understand this? Is there a point? What’s the point? What’s the point? What’s the point?

And suddenly I’m no longer in the practice.

I’m outside myself, watching myself be watched.

That’s not the same thing as making art.

It may produce content. It may produce a useful video. It may produce something that can circulate through the machine. But something is lost.

And I’m no longer interested in the loss.

I’m interested in the being.

I’m interested in presence. I’m interested in pleasure. I’m interested in the intimate, transformative, delicious process of sitting with color and shape and image without forcing it to justify itself in real time.

I’m interested in what happens when I don’t ask my art to become instruction before it has even finished becoming itself.

This is why I’m aiming to create the thing I keep wanting.

I want to be in practice with someone.

I want to be in the frequency of someone’s creativity without being managed through it. I want to watch the hand move, the color arrive, the image shift, the page become itself. I want the intimacy of process without the constant overlay of explanation. I want to be near the practice, not turned into a student every time I enter the room.

Because I love watching.

I love watching someone make something. I love watching the way one color calls another forward. I love watching the moment when the maker pauses because something in the piece has changed and now she has to listen differently. I love the small, wordless decisions. The rearranging. The layering. The covering over. The starting again. The place where the piece seems to become less about control and more about relationship.

There’s such pure communication in that kind of watching, even when no words are being exchanged.

For me, it’s its own kind of shamanic practice. I know that may not mean something to everyone, and this isn’t the essay where I’m going to unpack it fully. But there’s something deeply intimate and deeply authentic about being invited to witness someone in the act of creation, when they’re truly present with what’s moving through them. If you’re given to this kind of belief, you could say they’re in co-creation with Life itself. With beauty. With Eros. With the whole of all things.

And to witness that is something deeply meaningful.

It’s edifying. Uplifting. Nourishing. Beautiful.

It’s also an honor.

That’s what I’m looking for when I go searching for art videos online. I’m looking for the honor and pleasure of being allowed to witness someone in that holy communion. Not to extract a technique. Not to be sold another pathway into my own creativity. To be near the living current of someone else’s devotion.

That’s what I’m hungry for.

Not a tutorial or explanation of every stroke.

A practice.

A shared field.

A place where creativity is allowed to be itself before it has to become useful, instructional, branded, or sold.

And this is also why whatever I create in this vein will never be a tutorial series. And please note: I’m not saying tutorial series aren’t important. They serve a very important purpose.

It’s simply that I’m not here to teach you how to make what I make. I’m not here to explain every mark, every material, every color choice, every movement of my hand. That’s not my calling. That’s not my desire. It’s certainly not my pleasure. Ultimately, I’m here to be with all of you in a shared experience that has meaning to give.

So what I’m here for is the practice.

When I turn on the camera and invite you into that space, the offering is simple: I’m going to be in my art practice for the next hour or so. You’re welcome to be here with me.

That’s it.

An offering of devotion to art. An offering of devotion to life. An offering of devotion to co-creation, to Eros, to the beauty of flow.

If it serves you, if it calls to you, if it becomes a little nourishment for your day, then we’re blessed.

I’m here to open a small, protected space where we can be in the making together. Where you can enter the room, so to speak, and not be instructed, managed, or talked at, but invited into presence.

You may be making something alongside me. You may simply be watching.

Either way, the point isn’t performance.

The point is communion.

Because each piece of art is an artifact of a moment. A moment of attention. A moment of devotion. A moment of beauty moving through the body into form. And I believe the way a thing is made lives inside the thing itself.

The presence, the pleasure, the silence, and the frequency of the making are meaningful.

My hope is that when a piece comes through me in that kind of presence, something of that presence is held in the work. And if that piece ever comes into your home, may it touch you. May it become a resonant field in your life. May the devotion embedded in it speak to the devotion in you.

And if you choose to come behind the paywall and be in practice with me there, that’s the field you’re entering.

Not a classroom or a content machine or a voice over art video.

A practice.

A quiet threshold.

A place to remember what it feels like to be with creativity without needing to turn it into packaged instruction.

Pssst. I start the shared art practice in August 2026