The Truth About Creative Freedom

No one becomes free alone

Jul 04, 2026

The image I doodle while contemplating the true meaning of creative freedom…

It’s the Fourth of July, and the word freedom is everywhere. Ever notice how we tend to use freedom and independence as if they are the same word?

But are they the same thing?

When I think of how we talk about independence in our country, it often translates to: I don’t need you. I can do this myself. Nobody can tell me how to do something.

It feels more like a declaration of separation.

While sometimes we truly need to cultivate some independence, I do not believe it is the same as freedom. Not even close. Because there’s something I keep bumping into as an artist: we were never meant to become ourselves alone.

This reminds me of an experience I had in college during an art critique.

★ The Jail Cell Sculpture

In college, a woman in my sculpture class spent weeks building a jail cell. It was a serious endeavor. The walls stood six or seven feet tall, with bars she constructed and painted by hand. In the center, she was gathering objects that others had thrown away and slowly transforming them under layers of papier-mache. She was clearly working toward some kind of powerful statement.

We all watched her build it. The professor watched her build it, class after class, saying nothing.

Then critique day came. And he tore it apart.

I don’t remember his exact words anymore. What I remember is her face. I remember all of us sitting there stunned, watching someone get hurt in public and not knowing how to stop it. I remember talking with her afterward, both of us asking the same question: why didn’t he say anything sooner?

And underneath that, a bigger question lingers with me to this day: why didn’t we ask her more questions to understand it first?

Maybe she explained it a little bit, but the fact that I don’t remember what she meant it to be about and only remember the harsh criticsm says a lot. A room full of artists sat in front of a jail cell, and every one of us stayed locked inside our own perceptions that we didn’t know how to break out of. We didn’t know how to explore with her and see through her eyes. We didn’t know how to create a safe space for transformation to occur. We missed an opportunity we didn’t even know was there.

As a result, she never wanted to touch the piece again. She wanted to throw the whole thing away. Whatever powerful statement was forming in that work, whatever we all could have learned and grown from within it, died in that room.

We all stayed trapped in our own cages, a jail cell we couldn’t even see. Every one of us was in our own independent worlds day and, yet, not one of us felt free.

★ Why We Hang Things on Walls

Many of us former art majors have had experiences like this. Most of us have had our creations torn apart in some way before we could even finish forming them. And yet, we still feel compelled to share our work with others. Because of those past experiences, though, we often shy away from it, or only show it with huge amounts of trepidation.

We feel safer in the part of the process where we are making things alone. This is an incredibly important and fulfilling aspect of creating, and a big reason we do it. As we make, we gain clarity, we investigate, we expand. Something in us shifts that couldn’t shift any other way.

But I’ve come to believe the transformation isn’t complete until the work meets other people. Sharing isn’t something that happens after the creative process. It’s part of the creative process. The work deepens when it lands in another person. We deepen.

So when the spaces where we share are unsafe, we don’t just get our feelings hurt. We get cut off from half of our own becoming. And a person cut off from their own becoming is not free, no matter how independent they are.

★ And It’s Not Just Art School

This inability to hold meaningful space with one another, the kind of space that frees us all, shows up everywhere we gather.

I stopped going to my neighborhood business meetings years ago because they hurt to sit through. Longtime residents came carrying decades of history and belonging. Newcomers came with fresh energy and genuinely good ideas. Both had so much to give, and neither could see what the other was offering.

Nobody took the time to understand each other, so everything turned competitive instead of collaborative, and we all lost. We left those meetings feeling stuck and limited, guarding our independence as if someone were trying to take it, when we could have been helping each other become freer in the pursuit of what matters.

★ So What Is Freedom, Really?

Here’s where I land, this Fourth of July.

True freedom is not freedom from each other. It’s what becomes possible with and through each other.

It’s the freedom to bring your half-formed, vulnerable, still-becoming work into a room and have someone ask you a real question about it. The freedom to say what you’re struggling with and be met with curiosity instead of verdict. The freedom to transform in the company of people committed to your becoming, while you stay committed to theirs.

That freedom doesn’t just happen. It’s a practice. Someone has to hold the space. Someone has to know how to ask.

And this is exactly the practice at the heart of something new I’ve been creating. A while back, I hinted that an initiative was stirring in me. It has a name now, and I introduce it properly below this post.

For now, I’ll just say this: I believe our creative power lives in us naturally, and is also completely bound up in being with others. I’ve seen what happens when we get this wrong, and I’ve tasted what happens when we get it right. I’m done waiting for spaces that know how to hold us. I’m helping to build one.

This is the freedom I mean: not just the freedom to be fully yourself, but the truth that becoming fully yourself is wrapped up in this thing called life with others. We don’t just free ourselves. We free each other, and it starts with a safe and curious space where that kind of unfolding can happen.

🌀Your Creative Challenge

Get curious about something someone you know is making. A painting, a garden, a business, a batch of bread, anything. Ask them one thoughtful question about it. Not advice. Not opinion. A real question.

If you can’t think of one, borrow one of these:

What are you discovering as you make this?
What part of it feels most alive to you right now?
What do you wish someone would ask you about it?

Then notice what happens. Notice what opens in them, and what opens in you.

That’s what freedom actually feels like.

🎉Introducing CoRise

Now, about that something new.

I’m shaping a nonprofit with four other beautiful creative souls in the Cincinnati area, and it’s called CoRise. The name says it plainly: we rise together.