The Artist as Threshold: Creating from the Space Between Worlds

There are moments in the studio when I feel less like a maker and more like a doorway — as if something passes through me, using my hands to find form. It’s not about control. It’s about listening. The artist, at their best, becomes a threshold between the seen and the unseen — between what is known and what is only felt.

For years, I’ve thought of art not as an object but as an encounter — a portal between dimensions of being. The canvas becomes a membrane between two realities: the physical world of pigment and texture, and the invisible realm of emotion, intuition, and archetype. Somewhere between those two planes, creation happens.

This is where the artist lives — not in one world or the other, but at the intersection. We are translators of vibration, sculptors of energy. We gather fragments from dreams, memories, and sensations, and attempt to assemble them into something coherent enough to be seen, but still mysterious enough to breathe. The process is both sacred and deeply human. It’s the act of holding light and shadow in the same hand.

When I teach, I encourage my students to find that same threshold in themselves — the point where fear and flow meet. Because that’s where transformation occurs. Whether they’re drawing from observation or from imagination, the moment they stop trying to “make art” and start being the artist — that’s the moment the real work begins.

Art, at its core, is the language of thresholds. It doesn’t exist to give us answers; it exists to help us stand more fully in the mystery. The brushstroke, the line, the gesture — these are all ways of opening the door. And each time we enter that doorway, we return changed.