What Makes You an Artist, Really?

For the past 5 months, my Saturdays have been reserved for my art course on Zoom. I genuinely look forward to it — it’s become one of the most meaningful two to three hours of my week.

The course is led by Russian-born artist Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov, who lives and works in New York.

This past session, we spoke about what makes someone an artist.

I don’t have a formal education in art — in fact, this course is my first real exposure to it. And I find it fascinating. I feel like a sponge, absorbing everything that comes my way.

At the same time, I’m very aware of the difference between myself and those who have studied art formally. The language they use, the references they draw from, the range of materials and techniques they’re familiar with — it all feels much broader than my own. I would love to go to art school one day, but right now it’s simply not realistic. I have a 13-year-old son, and life is what it is.

So the question keeps returning: Can I be an artist without formal education? Are courses and self-learning enough?

That’s why this week’s conversation stayed with me. Iliya spoke about how being an artist is not defined by academia alone.

It’s shaped by life itself.

Your Background Is Your Strength

When I work on assignments for the course, I almost always turn inward. My starting point is rarely something external like mythology, science, or religion. It comes from my own life, from memory, from what I’ve lived through.

So when Iliya spoke about bringing our personal experience into the work, it felt like relief. Like permission.

One thing he said stayed with me:

What makes you an artist is not only education. It’s life.

I want to pause here, because I know how many people feel like they don’t quite belong in the art world. If your path has nothing to do with art, that doesn’t make you weaker. It makes you distinct.

Maybe you were a designer. Or worked in a restaurant. Did nails. Collected prayer beads. Sculpted dumplings. Watched vampire TV shows obsessively. Maybe your life took you through places that don’t fit into a clean narrative.

All of it matters.

All of it is material.

Because no one else has lived your life the way you have.

Sometimes You Need to Step Away from Art to Find It

Contemporary art can feel like an ocean. Endless references, exhibitions, texts, opinions. It’s easy to lose your own voice inside all of it. At some point, you have to step back. Not away from art, but away from the noise around it — and return to yourself.

Iliya asked us to sit with a few questions:

What do I actually like?
What do I understand deeply?
What do I feel, and what is my perspective?
What have I lived through that cannot be taken from me?

Where the Work Comes From

While working on my last assignment, I found myself drawn to using human hair in a sculpture. At first, it might seem like an unusual choice. But for me, it was obvious.

My husband owns a hair extensions business, and before ceramics, I worked alongside him. That period of my life shaped me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.

The piece I was making was about transition — about moving from one identity into another. From working in that world to building something of my own in clay. Using hair wasn’t just a material decision. It was a way of acknowledging where I came from, while stepping into something new.

Artists Who Work from Their Own Lives

Iliya shared examples of artists whose work is inseparable from their personal histories — not as inspiration, but as foundation.

Tracey Emin
Her work My Bed is exactly what it sounds like — her own bed, left as it was during a difficult emotional period. Nothing is hidden, nothing is transformed into metaphor. It is direct, raw, and entirely hers.

Sophie Calle
She followed strangers, documented absence, turned relationships and loss into a kind of narrative investigation. Her work feels like fragments of life, observed closely and carefully.

Nikki S. Lee
She immersed herself in different subcultures, becoming part of them, almost disappearing into each group. As an immigrant, she understood invisibility — and turned it into a method.

David Wojnarowicz
His life — on the streets, living with HIV, navigating identity — became inseparable from his work. Personal experience turned into something political and urgent.

Anthea Hamilton
She draws from memory, pop culture, fragments of growing up — transforming them into large-scale, often unexpected forms.

What This Means for Me

When I look at their work, I’m reminded that nothing in my own life is separate from what I make.

Growing up in the USSR.
Thirteen years of motherhood.
Moving from Russia to the United States.
Working in the hair extensions business.
Arriving at ceramics later than many others.

None of this stands in the way. All of it is material.

The sculpture I made using hair carried a story only I could tell — about leaving one version of myself behind and stepping into another.

I may not have the same academic language as some of my classmates. But I have lived experiences that cannot be learned, borrowed, or replicated. And maybe that is what it means when Iliya says that life is what makes you an artist. Because that’s where the work begins. My work as a ceramic artist continues to explore these questions through sculptural form and the material.