Awaken Your Inner Artist

By Rudy Gaskins, 9/21/2025

What is art, really? For centuries, we have looked to galleries, stages, and concert halls for the answer. Yet perhaps art is not confined to paint, music, or movement. Perhaps it is something closer to the human pulse: the intentional expression of how we feel mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. If that is true, then every one of us carries the possibility of being an artist. The question becomes whether we choose to honor that possibility.

This idea surfaced for me in an unexpected way, at a vulnerable moment. In 2013, I announced the creation of the Voice Arts Awards and even secured the trademark for the term Voice Arts. It was a bold statement: that voice acting, so often dismissed as technical or commercial, deserved recognition as an art form. Not long after, a voice actor wrote to challenge the very use of the word “art” in connection with our field. She insisted voice acting was not art at all.

I was caught off guard. It felt as though the ink was barely dry on a declaration I had made to the world, and suddenly I found myself having to defend it. Her challenge was not only about semantics but about the legitimacy of the idea I had staked my reputation on. And yet, beneath her argument, I sensed a more personal struggle: perhaps she could not see herself as an artist, and therefore could not accept that her work might be art.

We went back and forth without rancor, and finally agreed to disagree. I let her have the last word, but the exchange stayed with me. It raised an important question: if voice acting cannot be art, what could?

Carl Jung once observed, “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.” That is an invitation to anyone who doubts their creative worth. To see creativity not as a rare gift bestowed on a few, but as a capacity we all carry into whatever we do. The voice actor who interprets a line with feeling, rhythm, and nuance is not just speaking words. They are shaping sound into something that connects. They are, whether they accept it or not, performing art.

Still, it can feel daunting to call one’s own work art. Brené Brown, who has written extensively about creativity and vulnerability, reminds us that “unused creativity is not benign.” Left unattended, it can turn into frustration, shame, or even grief. When people insist they are not artists, perhaps what they are really saying is that they are afraid of what will surface if they let themselves be. Yet it is in that very act of opening the door to expression that growth happens.

So what if we thought of art less as a product and more as a practice? Instead of measuring ourselves against masterpieces, we might ask how we bring presence and imagination into our everyday efforts. A voice actor who experiments with tone and texture, who allows their own lived emotions to color the performance, is practicing art in real time. It is not about creating perfection, but about evolving with every attempt. Each script becomes a canvas, each performance a sketch.

The beauty of this perspective is that it does not belong to professionals alone. A parent soothing a child with a bedtime story, a teacher animating a history lesson, or a friend telling a joke with perfect timing is engaging in artistic expression. When viewed this way, art is not a distant pursuit, but a daily one. It lives in how we choose to share ourselves with others.

For voice actors especially, this shift in mindset can be transformative. Rather than waiting for someone else to label their work art, they can explore what it means to bring artistry into each moment behind the microphone. They can play with interpretation, push past habits, and evolve toward deeper authenticity. Over time, that willingness to experiment becomes its own kind of artistry.

Of course, not everyone will agree with this view. Some will hold tightly to traditional definitions, keeping art safely in the realm of paintbrushes and symphonies. And that is fine. What matters is not settling the debate once and for all, but exploring what becomes possible when we expand the boundaries of what art can be.

So perhaps the question is not whether you are an artist, but how you allow the artist in you to emerge. What happens when you give yourself permission to see your work, your voice, your life, as an ongoing act of creation? The answer might be less about recognition and more about resonance. Less about proving worth and more about discovering meaning.

In that sense, we are all artists in waiting. The invitation is to notice where art is already alive in our lives, and to nurture it. Not as a title to claim, but as a way of being to explore. ♦︎♦︎♦︎