Behind the Scenes: Finding Your Niche

The Pressure to Choose

How many times have you heard it? “Find your niche!” “What’s your one thing?” “You need to specialize to succeed.” The creative world seems obsessed with this ultimatum: become an expert at one specific craft, or risk being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. And as a visual artist, the conversation moves to having a specific style and voice. Some artists do this SO well. Their work has a look and feel that is all their own. Or they make a signature product in a certain style and have a huge following. So how exactly do we pick this “one thing” and go for it?

How do you decide?

There is a method that works to find your niche, and your style. Your thing. It’s both easier and harder than you think.

What if the real question isn’t about WHAT to specialize in - it’s about HOW to develop our timing, patience, work, and trust in the process?

The Unconscious Research Phase

Before I gave in to my dreams of becoming an artist, my path wound through childcare, food service, behavioral health care, (even a summer job in truck manufacturing!), and then a professional career in occupational therapy, optometry, and concussion/brain injury care. To an outsider, it might have looked scattered - like I couldn’t make up my mind about what I wanted to do.

Sure, some of those positions were to make a few bucks on my way to other goals. But every single one taught me something that makes me who I am. The patience and understanding I learned working with children. The creativity required in occupational therapy. The confidence in decision-making required as a doctor of optometry. The deep empathy developed through brain injury care. 

If I had first gone to art school, then began an art career at 21, my perspective would have been completely different than the messy, real, more complex vision and voice I now own in my forties. All of those experiences weren’t detours - they were unconscious research for the artist and person I was becoming. Necessary. Valuable. But a path I never could have mapped out as a teenage college student.

Changing direction isn’t failure at the first way.

Switchbacks are necessary to climb steep hills, and to reach big goals.

The Trap of Forcing “Your Thing”

When I finally began my art career in 2021, I fell into the same trap many creatives do. I was trying to find “my thing” immediately. I was going to specialize in making tiny things on the pottery wheel! Or maybe I’d create 4-inch paintings that worked together into larger puzzle-like compositions! They all sounded like fun ideas.

But they were just that - ideas. Forced concepts that came from my head, not from my hands or my heart. I was trying to rush what can’t be rushed. I felt I had to make up for lost time, and come up with an epic idea for big success right away.

The Real Work: Showing Up to the Mess

Here’s what I’ve learned: you can’t think your way to your artistic voice. You have to show up and get into the complicated, difficult work of making things. You have to pay attention to what happens when your hands are busy, and your head is in it.

What did you love about that particular piece or technique? What made you want to throw it across the room? What did others respond to, and how did their reaction spark new creative conversations? What happened naturally, as you worked without editing yourself?

This is where the real discovery happens - not in the planning, but in the doing. I’m telling you, every time I dive into a creative quandary like this, I can extrapolate my struggles within the project to my overall personality traits and patterns. Rather than risk a mistake in my art, I tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time planning, to try to avoid a problem. As I reflect on this, I also do that in my real life! But guess what? Problems occur anyway. Life is messy. I’m ready to deal with that, get brave, dive in and be okay with mistakes. The only way to get a different result is to change your actions; do something different.

Sequential Depth, Not Scattered Attention

The answer isn’t to intellectually decide on “the right” specialization. It’s about understanding that you can have multiple streams of experience and inspiration while committing deeply to your current practice, and allowing your focus to naturally narrow as you follow your path. YOUR path. No one else has lived your life, so how can you ask them what to do next?

I like thinking about thinking. And it has helped me to separate this process into two types of thought: Divergent and convergent. In the beginning of a creative endeavor, it’s helpful to use divergent thinking - thoughts that flow freely and go out in all directions, exploratory thoughts, looking for all the possibilities in your project. But there is a tipping point when you need to switch to convergent thinking if you ever want to wrap up. In convergent thinking, you begin to focus in, editing out some of the unnecessary paths and details that are no longer relevant. You then begin to develop mastery in what’s in front of you right now. Divergence and convergence are not exactly opposite ways of thinking; they’re different phases of the same creative process.

You won’t find your niche by picking one narrow path and sticking to it.

You’ll find it by exploring all possibilities, moving forward authentically, and gradually letting the other paths fall away.

Permission to Trust the Process

Your “thing” WILL emerge from doing the work consistently over time, not from deciding in a single moment what it should be. Every experience, every job, every failed experiment is research and substance for your eventual creative voice. The key is showing up regularly and paying real attention to what the work is teaching you. Patience is key.

And let me get ahead of all you fellow Type A achievers out there - patience isn’t passive waiting - it’s active engagement with the process, trusting that your path is forming beneath your feet as you walk it. But you have to take that next step.

Just start, take action…

And notice what aspects of the process come naturally, pull you in, make you forget about the clock and the rest of the world.

Starting Where You Are: Next Steps 

I’m still figuring this out too, by the way. My ceramic practice continues to evolve, and I’m constantly learning what works and what doesn’t. But I’m no longer trying to force it into a predetermined box. I’m trusting the process and paying attention to what emerges. I’ve been loving the rawness of drawing freeform directly on my pieces, while carefully observing my subject. This is informing what type of pieces to throw on the wheel, and what type of clay works best to provide a clean surface for drawing, and the proper scale for what I’m drawing.

So where does this leave you if you’re in the thick of trying to figure out your creative direction? Start where YOU are, today. Not where anyone else is, and not where you think you should be. Pick one medium, one technique, one project that genuinely interests you right now - not because it’s your ‘niche’ but because it makes you curious. Notice what you love, what frustrates you, what surprises you. Then let that information guide your next choice. And keep going.

If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear about your own creative journey. What’s one thing you’re exploring right now that makes you genuinely curious? What’s one pattern you’ve noticed in your own creative process? Your story matters, and it’s probably more connected than you think.