As a full-time working artist in 2025, I sometimes get caught between wanting to create freely and feeling pressure to “master” everything—to be fast, visible, accomplished. Honestly, that tension is what stops a lot of really creative people form going forward with their craft. Then I read about Michelangelo and am shamed (in a really good way though). His name feels almost too large to touch, like he belongs in textbooks and marble halls. But when I look closer, I see an artist who wrestled deeply with his work, with himself, and with what it meant to make something meaningful in a complicated world. I really like that.
Michelangelo wasn’t just gifted—he was obsessed. He worked with intensity, solitude, and relentless drive. He carved, painted, sketched, designed buildings. He labored over details that most people would never see. He pushed himself physically and emotionally to the point of exhaustion. And yet, he kept creating—not for fame, but because he had to.
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.”
That quote says everything. In a culture that often glorifies talent and instant success, Michelangelo reminds me that greatness comes from discipline, sacrifice, and focus over time. It’s okay to work slowly. It’s okay to struggle. The work should challenge us.
What also strikes me is how spiritually driven he was. Whether or not you share his beliefs, there’s something powerful in the way he treated art as a calling—a bridge between the earthly and the divine. In a time where so much feels transactional, he reminds me that art can still be sacred.
He also lived with contradiction. He was intensely private but created public masterpieces. He loved the male form but lived in a culture that condemned it. He was a sculptor who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling because he had to, not because he wanted to. There’s something reassuring about that complexity. It tells me that we don’t have to be perfectly aligned to create powerful work—we just have to keep showing up.
Michelangelo’s life teaches me that art isn’t just about beauty. It’s about devotion, wrestling, patience, and faith—in the process, in the craft, and in the possibility of saying something that lasts.