The Joy of Art: Embracing Creativity, Confidence and Growth

This year, Celebrating the World Week is all about JOY! Each day highlights a unique theme centered around joy, offering us an opportunity to reflect, connect and celebrate together. We’re excited to share daily blog posts from members of our community. Each post will explore the day’s joyful focus, offering personal insights, stories and inspiration to help us all embrace the spirit of joy.

We invite you to follow along as we celebrate what makes our community vibrant, connected and joyful! 

By EC Visual Arts Teacher Megan McDermott

A stark white, blank, canvas staring back at you. It can be an intimidating thing. How do I begin? What if I mess up? What if I fail?

As a teacher of art, I see my job as an opportunity to bring joy to my students through the creation of art. It only takes one brush stroke to begin, one idea, one mark, and then the canvas is no longer bare, no longer intimidating. What one might believe to be a mistake is often not. That so-called mistake could create a whole new perspective, a whole new vision, a whole new joy.

And what about failure? What is failure in art? They are the standards you have set for yourself, an idea you have about what you “should” create, what art “should” be. 

I watch students working every day in clay, glass and drawing and painting, and they consistently think they have failed and that their work is not good enough. What they don’t always grasp is that they have created something from nothing! Every step in the creation process is filled with reflection, intention and growth. 

I love teaching art. I love watching the students grow in confidence and fill their canvases with color and personality.

The joy that comes from creation is unlike anything else. 

Watching my students in the creation process is one of my joys. The joy radiating from my students’ faces when they have completed a work of art fuels my passion for teaching. 

We are all God’s creations; he did not fail while creating any one of us. We are all different and unique, just like all the art my students create. Art is joy—the joy of creation, the joy of making something entirely your own. 

If you have questions about Celebrating the World Week at EC, please contact Director of Equity and Social Action Jenny Abbey.