Now this is a topic I, ironically, am very passionate about. Let’s start with a bit of an introduction.
My name is Mickey Murphy. I’m a twenty-three-year-old graphic artist by day and well… artist artist by night. I have been creating some form of “art” since I was about five years old. It started with creative writing, then video production, and then slowly moved to digital art several years down the line. I started posting my digital art creations on social media consistently about three years ago. As I’ve moved through this process and realized my dream would be to live off of my creations, it’s left me with a great deal of time (because, let’s be real, me living off of my own personal art isn’t happening any time soon) to figure out what I wanted to share with the world.
It’s quite a grand, philosophical question really. For me, being that my art is the way I communicate with the world, it’s like asking myself what kind of mark I want to leave on the world; what I want to do with my life; how can I help others?
Uproote, my “brand” (also known as the handle I operate under online), has a very personal meaning. To me, it means the step between uproot and uprooted (so yes, the extra E has a purpose and isn’t just stylistic (although it certainly started that way)), in the context of our inner selves and who we really are. My intention for myself is to use my art as an outlet for all the truest of feelings within myself. A way to look deeper and perhaps further understand who I really am.
My art is a vehicle for that journey in many ways.
Yet, truly the nature of art seems to be humans expressing who they are through their ideas and messages. And in that mindset, art can be essentially anything. Us having an in-depth conversation with our friends is art in its own way.
This is why I believe everyone is an artist. Everyone has things they are passionate about.
So… lets remove the label of “artist” or “art” or even “artistic”.
Let’s break it down to just passion. What are the things you are most passionate about? What kind of ideas get you most excited? Where do your daydreams lead you to? What is bottled up inside you that you can’t seem to release? The idea of passion is a philosophical conversation in itself.
What drives us to live fulfilling lives?
Do you have an idea in your head of what you’re passionate about?
Feel free to pause for a moment and consider this before finishing.
Now, once you have that, how are you sharing that passion with the world around you? I mean this from the local scale to the whole world. Are you talking about your passions with your friends and family? Do you share it online? How are you showing who you are?
For me, this has been quite the rocky process. Like I said, I’m twenty-three so I’ve very much grown up in this digital age and I started sharing myself maybe a little earlier than I should’ve. It started pretty local. I’ve been writing little stories since I was about five. I’d print them out and give them to my friends in grade school to review. I’d email them to my great aunt in Washington or show my grandfather.
In 2009, I uploaded my first YouTube video and continue to do so to this day (just much less frequently). I started following quite a few of famous YouTubers and learned the internet through them and my own experiences. Quickly came Twitter, Tumblr, then Facebook and Instagram. As soon as I started using these other platforms, I was immediately sharing my YouTube videos, terrified of putting myself out there or not (there was some bullying in middle school when I told someone about them and it got passed around a bit (fun times)). I got a pretty brute upbringing in social media; it was generally a lonely and unkind road; my actions never gained any considerable traction which inherently made it feel like a waste of time. But… I just kept going. I’d stop for a good period of time quite often, but never actually stopped altogether.
Very shortly after I started posting on YouTube, I got a copy of Adobe Photoshop. This is what then began my journey into digital arts. Fast forward a decade now I make it personally and professionally. Professionally, it’s more design than art, but design is still art nonetheless.
Working professionally in the arts has only fueled my social media usage to share myself. While I feel happier and grateful doing this kind of work for a living wage, it just increasingly makes me want to be able to support myself by myself without some business overlord to report to. I’m sure almost all artists and many “non-artists” feel my pain.
Truthfully, all of this came down to me sharing myself in my many artistic and personal facets online. And, in recent years, I have discovered something that makes my connections online feel much more immersive. Shared interests.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Mickey, did you really make me read all that personal backstory just for you to say social media is good because people have things in common?”
And the answer to that is yes. Yes, I did. But I’m not done.
I love plants. I love to take pictures of plants. I love to watch plants grow. I love the forest or really anything rich with life. Nature has been a massive inspiration for me artistically. It’s honestly what almost all my art is about, besides maybe the human mind, which is still nature anyway.
But I also love expressing the human experience elements. Things that bring me joy, things that make me think or make me feel.
This all just bleeds right into my existence online. I try to share from white to black (with the, at times, major caveats my anxiety and fear forces upon me). This has led to two trends; new friendships from shared interests or revitalized friendships over newly discovered shared interests.
I think the latter is more of an interesting tidbit. For example, we’ve taken up full-on vegetable growing and gardening in our home and I’ve shared that process mostly via Instagram stories. My ex-girlfriend from eighth grade and I, who found me on Instagram a few months prior, have started talking nearly regularly about our vegetable gardens.
A multitude of my pre-existing relationships have been bolstered by how much I share online now. My day-to-day likes and interests are out there on display and people I know have the chance to recognize similar traits and strike up a conversation about it. It’s beautiful, really.
And that doesn’t even cover the new connections I’ve made online from mutually sharing ourselves. Each of us unitedly supporting each other’s sharing through the obvious, likes and shares, but also through constructive and creative conversation.
My life, personally has been well enriched by it. I am so fucking grateful for the connections I’ve made and rekindled. It’s allowed me to feel more present within my life and the life of the world around me; most particularly the people I love, but also strangers and people I have yet to cross paths with.
So, this is what has brought me to medium to discuss. While I don’t think this will be good for everyone, I do think this will be good for some. Those are the people I’m hoping to reach with this.
If you have things that you are passionate about, be proud of them. Represent that part of yourself honestly.
No, that doesn’t mean you have to scream it from the mountaintops or even share yourself online. Just be sure you release those parts of yourself when the time comes.
If you don’t have things that you feel your passionate about, take the personal and mental time to open up to yourself and see what you find.
Find ways to grow your passion seeds. Practice spending time with them. Create things from it. Share that with your people, or even strangers. You may never know the kind of hidden, yet possible, collaborative relationship you and your neighbor have waiting to be unfurled.
Honestly, I just want to find ways to bring people together. I’ve spent quite some time wondering where I want my artistic career to go throughout the long term. How can I help the world with my existence and mind? The running theory I’ve come to (which, knowing me, is bound to change at any point in time), through the culmination of the steps I’ve taken thus far, I want to assist in opening the doorway for more collaborative connections between artistic individuals. I want to bring us together; show each other more similarities than things that divide us.
And I don’t mean just artistic folks. Remember how in the beginning I was going on and on about how everyone is an artist? Right, okay. Full circle now.
This is what I want Uproote to become. A coming together of people from anywhere with anything to share ideas and make new things for our world. Combine our passions and enable each other through that process. To promote a positive outlet for anyone who needs it.
And so that is about it. I truly appreciate you taking the time to listen to me rant on about mostly myself, and I do apologize for the many tangents. But hopefully you see the general point I am trying to encourage.
This has been something I’ve been pretty intensely thinking about for a good while. And, while it is an extremely long-term goal that will not be easily achieved, I do care about this particular passion quite a bit and do want to enact the passion where I can. I think this is just the hearty first step I was waiting to make; sharing my intention online.
The last thoughts I will leave you with is this:
Don’t be afraid to find yourself and let your inner currents guide you towards where you feel happiest. Whatever that may be.
Not only that, but reach out to me on here, or Instagram or twitter. I would love to talk to you about this or answer questions or ask questions or give feedback. Or if you have an interest in collaborating, I would sincerely enjoy discussing it.
Who knows, we may have more in common than you think. ❤
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