Notes from an Artist Who Teaches

I’m a full-time art teacher. That sentence alone usually gets two very different reactions.

One group imagines endless creativity, paint-splattered days, and the joy of “getting paid to do art.” The other assumes I must be completely drained by the end of the day, with nothing left for my own creative work. The truth, predictably, lives somewhere in the messy middle.

Teaching art full time has shaped my creative life in ways I didn’t fully expect. Some days, it fuels me. Being surrounded by young people discovering how to see, question, and make meaning through images keeps my creative muscles awake. Explaining ideas out loud forces clarity. Demonstrating techniques keeps my hands honest. There’s a strange magic in teaching something and then realising you’ve relearned it yourself.

But there’s another side to it. Teaching takes energy — emotional, mental, physical. By the time the classroom is quiet and the materials are packed away, my own work can feel like one more thing asking something of me. The irony isn’t lost on me: spending all day nurturing creativity can leave very little space to sit with my own.

Over time, I’ve had to let go of a romantic idea of what an “artist’s life” is supposed to look like. My practice doesn’t happen in long, uninterrupted stretches. It happens in fragments. Sketches between lessons. Ideas scribbled during lunch. Studio time reclaimed deliberately, not casually. Teaching didn’t kill my creativity — but it did force me to be more intentional about protecting it.

This is the tension I live in: being deeply committed to helping others grow creatively, while learning how to keep my own creative voice alive and evolving.