"Oh I am not Artistic at all!" she exclaimed, throwing herself back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. "I am no good at painting or art or anything like that!”

Sadly this is one of the most common and yet completely inaccurate self-criticisms I hear from clients during a Tarot reading...

“So…do you cook?” I ventured, and received a shrug in response.
“Yeh, a bit,” now we’re getting somewhere…
“Garden?”
“Nope,” ok I should have guessed that.
“Change your hair style?” she looked at me blankly. This was getting difficult.
“Dress yourself every morning?” I’d had enough.
“Look, creativity is not just about doing art; it’s about how you express yourself, how you dress, how you think or how you solve problems. Some of the most creative minds in the world have never so much as picked up a paintbrush!” I exclaimed. I held her in a steady gaze.

“So,” I settled back in my chair, determined not to let this one get away, “in what way do you express yourself creatively in your life?”
“Well….I kind of like photography…” she said timidly and finally we had a place to start…

I often see this reaction when the Artistic card comes out on the table. It seems that we are indoctrinated in high school (or even earlier) to think that if we don’t excel in the classic arts like drawing or painting then we are artistic failures, and this is a difficult mindset to undo.

I remember getting told off in the second grade for colouring in outside the lines. It didn’t work at that young age to try to explain that I hadn’t meant to stay inside the lines, that I was doing my own drawing rather than the one which had been laid out for me. Later I could look back and see my Aquarian rebelliousness starting to cut its teeth, but back then all I knew was that I was being told I was wrong. Grrrrrrr.

More than ever before, we are in an age of self-expression. We get to create our own image online, style our own avatars on Facebook and MySpace and join a host of blog sites and online forums where we get to create who we want to be and how we want others to see us. A quick scroll through YouTube will reveal how keen even the nerdiest nerd is to show you their latest trick online.

So with all this rampant self-expression going on, why do I see talented people dismiss their abilities and put down their own creations again and again?

My gut feeling is that somewhere along the way too many of us have bought into the idea that to be artistic you have to be someone special. We have been convinced that only certain people are born with a magical ability that makes them artistic or musical and that creative talent is a pre-determined genetic thing that can’t be found in the average person.

I used to model for art classes which gave me the pleasure of being paid to sit around :) and the opportunity to absorb a fair bit of drawing and painting technique. One teacher had a favourite story. When she mentioned to anyone that she taught drawing classes she would invariably hear the comment “Oh, I can’t draw!” to which she would ask, “So can you play the piano?”
“No, not at all,” was the usual reply, which she would counter with, “and why not?” The flustered answer would inevitably come back, “well, I have never had lessons!” and there the case rests...

A friend of mine (who went to art school and was very good at securing grant money for her projects) told me that art is artificial. So technically, anything man made is art…and that definition would explain a lot of things in the contemporary abstract section of the art gallery… one man’s junk is another man’s art, it really is just a matter of taste.

Seriously though, as human beings we are constantly creating ourselves and our lives by our choices. Even our bodies are naturally creative, forming new cells every day. So the Artistic card is really asking not if, but how? As the artist of your life, how do you choose to express yourself? What limits do you put on your own artistic expression? How much do you recognise and appreciate your own creativity?

For questions and tips about reading Tarot ~ Ask The Hoo