Was I a Rebellious Artist Without Realizing It?

Sometimes what looks like rebellion is simply curiosity, creativity, and the courage to express what lives inside us.

During my senior year of high school, I created a series of portraits for my AP Art thesis. They were paintings of friends—and one of myself—but they didn’t look the way people expected portraits to look. Instead of painting realistic skin tones, I experimented with bright blues, pinks, greens, and oranges. I was fascinated by how color could shift the emotion of a painting—how it could change the mood, energy, and feeling of a face.

Inspired by the bold color explorations of Andy Warhol, I wanted to see what would happen if I approached portraits in a completely different way. The compositions were playful and a little quirky: friends laughing, smiling, captured in moments of personality. To tie the series together, I painted a portrait of myself holding a Diet Coke can in my hand.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about how people would interpret the work. I wasn’t asking myself whether they would like it or understand it. I was simply curious—curious about color, about what it could do, and about what might happen if I painted people in a way that felt expressive rather than realistic.

When the paintings were displayed in our senior AP Art show—a pop-up gallery in the high school cafeteria—people reacted. They recognized the faces in the paintings, but seeing them rendered in unexpected colors made them pause, laugh, and look closer. To them, it felt surprising. To me, it was simply exploration.

Looking back now, decades later, I can see how someone might have interpreted those paintings as rebellious. But at the time, it never felt rebellious to me. It felt creative.

“Artists aren’t rebellious by nature. They’re expressive by nature. Curiosity simply leads them somewhere others haven’t looked yet.”

Are Artists Really Rebellious?

Artists are often labeled rebellious. The stereotype suggests artists resist authority, challenge convention, and break rules simply because they can.

This could be true for some, but I’ve come to believe something different. Artists may appear rebellious because they are willing to:

• question norms

• imagine alternatives

• express emotions others keep hidden

• show the world through a different lens
  
  

That’s not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s creative honesty.

For most artists, the act of creating isn’t about defying the world around them. It’s about expressing the ideas, stories, and emotions that already exist within them. Artists rarely sit down with the intention of fitting in. Instead, they create because something inside them wants to exist outside their mind.

• Sometimes that becomes a painting.

• Sometimes a story.

• Sometimes an idea shared with others.

• And sometimes it simply stays in a sketchbook.
  

The Artist as a Black Swan

Growing up, I often felt a little different. I was the only girl in my family, the only left-handed one, and the only artist. But looking back, I don’t think that made me a black sheep. If anything, it made me more like a black swan.

For a long time in history, people believed all swans were white—until black swans were discovered. Their existence challenged what people thought they knew about the world. In many ways, artists do something similar.

Artists imagine possibilities others haven’t seen yet. They explore ideas, colors, emotions, and perspectives simply because they are curious about what might happen.

From the outside, that curiosity can look like rebellion. But from the inside, it often feels like exploration. Artists aren’t necessarily trying to challenge the world. They’re simply responding to something inside themselves that wants to be expressed.

The Drive to Keep Creating

Recently I listened to an episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast where host Alex Cooper interviewed bestselling author Sarah J. Maas.

Listening to her story reminded me so much of my own creative journey.
Watch or Listen here!

She began writing her first book as a teenager. Her goal wasn’t fame or recognition—it was simply to keep writing until she was published. During the interview she said something that stayed with me: even if it took until she was 90 years old, she wasn’t going to stop.

That kind of dedication felt incredibly familiar. I started creating stories and artwork when I was about six years old. My path looks different, but the passion feels very much the same.

Creating isn’t something I do occasionally. It’s something I will always do.

Final Thoughts

Looking back at those colorful portraits in my high school art show, I realize now that what others may have seen as unexpected—or even rebellious—was simply curiosity.

It was a young artist exploring color, emotion, and possibility without worrying about how it would be received.

Maybe artists aren’t rebellious by nature at all.

Maybe they’re simply people willing to follow their curiosity wherever it leads.

And every once in a while, that curiosity introduces the world to something it didn’t know existed.

Like a black swan appearing where everyone once believed only white ones lived.

And sometimes, those discoveries begin quietly—on the pages of a sketchbook.

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