Art is an Act of Courage

This coloring book page was inspired by an essay I wrote titled "Art as an Act of Courage." My involvement with the essay was engrossing; I went all in. It still sticks with me. I decided to use the title of the essay, but changed it to read "Art is an Act of Courage."A snippet of the essay appears at the end of this post.

Follow along to see the steps taken to create this coloring book page.

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Style the Words

The swash descender of the letter f overlapping the G in the word courage is intentional; It does not look good — as is here . However, when the letters of the quote become outlines for coloring, the f's descender will be delineated and clearly visible; it will then appear on top of the word courage. This treatment helps form a cohesive typographic unit and composition for the quote.

I used Katari Medium for the words art and act. Because art is an act, I wanted the two words to match in typeface and point size. I also wanted their typeface to be an artistic display serif to contrast with the word courage. For courage, I used the bold sans-serif typeface Impact, which is aptly named and portrays the strong feel I wanted. For the smaller words—is, an, and of—I used the typeface Above the Beyond Script Regular to add a decorative flourish, making them playful directionals rather than core words of the message.

Create a Header

I chose stars, moon, sun, waves, lines, and little planets to symbolize the infinite realms and reaches of art. Courage reaches for the cosmos.

This design will function as the header above the quote. It will integrate with a background that incorporates a few of the same elements, styled differently, to surround the quote. The tools I used included different shape tools (ellipse, circle, and star), the pathfinder, layers, expand appearance, scissors, distort and transform > zigzag.

E S S A Y

Originally published at Sophia Learning English Composition I - Fall 2025

Snippet of the Essay: Art as an Act of Courage

At its core, art often expresses a powerful act of courage through innovation, personal vulnerability, and the perseverance essential for an expanded, contemporary definition.

The first of these courageous acts, innovation, is expressed as a bravery that often disrupts established norms and redefines what art can be. Boldness shines in the work of visionary creators who redefine the boundaries of their discipline.

Piet Oudolf’s courage is expressed most significantly through his innovation, as he redefines the art of horticulture. A pioneer of the “New Perennial Movement,” he boldly moved away from traditional, manicured gardens, creating living art based on a naturalistic vision using mass plantings of grasses and perennials. This holistic bravery requires patience, as his living art takes years to mature and needs to be continually shaped and tended. His stunning designs—from the High Line in New York and the Delaware Botanic Gardens to the Beijing Urban Sub-Center Forest Park—demonstrate how his art can transform human interaction with the natural world.

Just as Oudolf reshapes the natural landscape, his fellow Dutchman, a groundbreaking architect and pioneer of deconstructivism, Rem Koolhaas’s courage is most significantly expressed through innovation, as he redefines how to interact with the built world. His most daring act of innovation is the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, a building easily recognized by its unconventional loop design. This project required incredible determination to overcome immense engineering and political challenges, demonstrating a relentless push against architectural convention. Ultimately, Koolhaas’s bravery lies in his willingness to create provocative, forward-thinking art on a massive scale, proving that courage is essential to transforming how humans interact with the built world. Inheriting a national legacy of innovation that reclaimed land from the sea, both Oudolf and Koolhaas redefine art not as a static object, but as a bold, boundary-breaking act that transforms the modern human experience.

While the courage of innovation creates new forms of art, an equally significant bravery is required to fill them with personal truth; the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois’s art is an intense, physical expression of the courage to be vulnerable, as she channeled her deep and most painful memories into her large-scale sculptures. Her famous gigantic spiders from the Maman series, for example, are a vulnerable and complex reflection of her mother, transforming a symbol of fear into one of love and protection. The very largest and most famous of these sculptures, crafted from bronze and stainless steel, have a sac containing marble eggs. By externalizing her inner turmoil for public consumption, Bourgeois transformed her personal suffering into a brave, universal statement on the human condition.

Where Bourgeois manifested this courage in tangible, physical forms, the legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s art is a testament to the courage of personal vulnerability, making her a leading voice for this type of bravery. As an artist who blurred the line between the public and private, she courageously put her most intimate emotions on full display through confessional songwriting. Mitchell’s music, a tapestry of intricate melodies and raw, unflinching lyrics, explored everything from painful relationships to the struggles of womanhood, creating a body of work that invites listeners into her most emotional experiences. Her bravery lies not just in writing about her life but in releasing it to the world, providing a rare glimpse, famously displayed in her album Blue, into the psyche of a true artist.

Whereas Joni Mitchell’s courage was in her direct, lyrical exposure, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe demonstrated a different form of vulnerability through his abstruse yet deeply introspective style. With his often mumbled and abstract lyrics, Stipe conveyed a sense of emotional honesty and inner searching that was rare in the rock world, where bravado was frequently the norm. This vulnerability was movingly on display in the band’s celebrated 1999 Glastonbury Festival performance of “Everybody Hurts,” a raw, communal expression of shared pain that served as a stirring example of his courage. Through the tangible forms of sculpture and the emotional resonance of music, Bourgeois, Mitchell, and Stipe prove that the courage of vulnerability is the essential act of transforming private struggle into a universal, artistic truth.

While innovation forges new paths and vulnerability fills them with personal truth, it is perseverance that ensures the artist reaches their destination. The final form of artistic courage, perseverance, is the persistent commitment to a vision or goal despite roadblocks such as repeated failure, physical and mental hardships, or opposition by society, individuals, or circumstances.

The world-famous boxer Muhammad Ali was an unexpected example of an artist whose perseverance was the most significant form of his courage. Ali’s artistic combination of physical grace, strategic brilliance, and charismatic performances elevated his fights beyond mere sport into captivating theatrical spectacles. He applied his innovative and unorthodox ‘Rope-a-Dope’ footwork strategy in the ring and, outside of it, performed as a poet, orator, and activist. While Ali demonstrated courage in his boxing career against fierce opponents, his most significant act of bravery was his tenacious creativity in the face of hostile societal reactions to him and his convictions, for which he paid the price of imprisonment and the loss of his title. Yet, he persevered with calculated grace, artistry, and style.

While Ali forged creative perseverance in the public crucible of the boxing ring and political activism, pioneer digital artist Beeple demonstrated his courage in the solitary, relentless commitment to his craft. Beeple is known for his satirical artwork and his perseverance in creating and posting a new piece every single day for over a decade. The key impact of his courageous perseverance was to bring unprecedented market value and mainstream attention to digital art through the use of NFTs. He faced challenges, such as the risk of creative burnout, public indifference or ridicule in the early years, and the mental fortitude required for such a long-term, self-motivated project without any guarantee of success. Ultimately, the courage of perseverance—so distinctly demonstrated by artists like Beeple and Muhammad Ali—is the final element of artistic acts. It is the unwavering commitment to a vision that gives art its staying power and, when combined with innovation and vulnerability, defines the true essence of artistic bravery.

The true essence of art, lies not in its beauty or technical skill alone, but in the acts of courage it demands from its creator. Courage is in the relentless pursuit of innovative vision by designers and architects who redefine how to interact with technology and the environment. It is in the vulnerability of musicians and sculptors who channel their most private experiences to transform personal pain into universal truths. And it is seen in the unwavering perseverance of those who, through relentless dedication, establish new genres and push their craft in the face of adversity.

This deeper understanding of art reveals it to be a vital human action, showing that many of the most meaningful creations are those born from bravery and a willingness to stand in the face of fear.

© 2025 Treva Stose