True artists rarely have one form of expression. Though most of us have a preferred manner of speaking, if you will, it hardly prohibits us from babbling in other languages. We can’t help it. Creativity is not a singular experience, nor is it inspired by one thing. Creative people are mediums who channel an energy that can come through in any number of ways. We can see a painting and write a poem, or read a poem and paint a scene.

I have always had a strong attraction to visual arts, though words are my favorite tool. I can put a pen to paper and generate emotion, display images, introduce people to the world, and create entire universes. For me, the writing experience is highly visual, however. I see everything I write. I have never, conversely, been able to recreate those images with the same level of accuracy using any other tool – a frustrating reality for a person who loves working in the visual medium.

While my paints, pastels, and pencils may wield their own unique style – one which I do not necessarily love and can’t seem to alter, I have discovered a newer form of visual expression that has proved to be both satisfying and inspired. Instagram.

I’m sure every digital artist in the room has just sighed and possibly choked back a bit of their last meal, but hear me out.

There is a natural pairing between words and images. They speak to and inspire one another.   The world is full of snapshots, tiny visual blips that exist in millions of spaces and at any given second… The turning spokes of a bicycle wheel as it rolls past the rigid immobility of a sewer grate… A vulture’s perch on a playground post… The softness of a flower somehow growing from the crevice of a stone… As a writer, I look at these things and see emotions, stories, poems, single sentences, lists of adjectives. Capturing these blips gives me that chance to share the visual experiences in life that inspire me. The option to adjust filters, angels, and finishes only extends and enhances the creative experience. Simple applications that allow me to lay the words I see across that image bring me to a state of digital ecstasy, allowing me to indulge in an entirely new medium.

Like many writers on Instagram, I am writing in a whole new way, drawing in followers using art conveyed with the split-second swiftness we have come to expect in the digital age. Squared off click-bait that must not only get attention but compel those that view it to want more of what I can provide. Learning to use these tools to promote myself as an artist of both words and images is vital to my success in the professional sense, but it is also wildly amusing and deeply inspiring… The world becomes a highly flammable substance with which I fuel the fires of my creativity.

Sure, there are tons of annoying “chat live” ladies and countless narcissists posting half-nude duck-faced selfies… But never let the glare of some make you blind to the beauty of all who lie in the shadows. Art is everywhere, even on Instagram. We need only open our eyes to it.