The Creative Visionary Challenge: Week One

A Creative Call to Courage: Vision Beyond the Medium

There’s a moment, often quiet and unassuming, when you realize your art has the potential to become something more than expression. It becomes declaration. It becomes confrontation. It becomes healing. That moment doesn’t always arrive with fireworks and sometimes it might come in the middle of grief, or rage, or silence. But once you’ve felt it, there’s no going back.

As we begin Week One of the Creative Visionary Challenge—Vision Beyond the Medium—I want to share a bit of my own path and invite you to join me in using your art to face something that matters deeply to you.

What Does It Mean to Be a Creative Visionary?

Create a Vision board - This is board is made by Shareece

To be a creative visionary is not just to make beautiful things. It’s to have the courage to ask: What is my role in the culture I’m living in? It’s about moving beyond aesthetics into advocacy, emotion, and activism. It’s about using your creative gifts not only to represent the world, but to reshape it.

This week’s theme, “Vision Beyond the Medium,” asks us to choose a cultural, social, or political issue that matters to us and use our art as a vessel for exploring it. For me, this is not just a challenge. It’s a continuation of the work I’ve already started and a way of giving shape to experiences I used to keep hidden in silence.

Why I Make the Work I Make

Much of my work as an artist and advocate has been about confronting abuse and specifically, childhood abuse within the home. It’s a subject many people avoid, because it is uncomfortable, painful, and, quite frankly, terrifying. But I know what it’s like to carry those secrets. I know what it’s like to try to build a life on top of buried trauma. And I know what it means to finally choose to name it and to say this happened, and this hurt, and I am still here.

Recovery (2025) - Shareece Williams

One of my recent pieces, Recovery, was inspired by Justin Bieber’s song of the same name. That painting became a turning point in my journey; a moment when I stopped painting around my story and started painting into it. The brushstrokes weren’t just technique; they were a way to push back against the silence I’d been handed as a child. The piece doesn’t just explore recovery. It is recovery.

Parallel Assassins (2025)

Another piece, Parallel Assassins, used digital collage to explore what it means to live with trauma in a world that doesn’t always make space for it. That work became a mirror to my internal world, showing both the chaos and clarity that come with reclaiming your voice.

So when I think about what my art stands for, I don’t have to reach far. My work stands for truth, even when it’s messy. It stands for survivors, especially those who haven’t yet found the words. It stands for the unspoken stories that deserve a place in the light.

Why This Challenge Matters

Too often, artists are told that their role is to entertain, to decorate, to inspire but not to disturb, not to confront. But some of the most powerful artistic work in history has done exactly that. Whether through music, visual art, writing, or performance, artists have always been the ones to say what others are afraid to say out loud.

This challenge is an opportunity for all of us to reclaim that role. To say: My art matters. My story matters. And I will use what I create to speak into the world I want to live in.

And here’s the beautiful part: you don’t need to have it all figured out. You don’t need to know exactly what your final piece will look like, or how it will be received. All you need is the courage to begin and to ask the questions, to sit with the tension, to trust that your creative process will lead you somewhere meaningful.

Your Turn: An Invitation to Reflect

Nina Simone

I want this to be a collective experience and not just me sharing my work, but all of us stepping forward together. So if you’re joining me for the Creative Visionary Challenge, here are some questions to help you begin Week One:

1. What cultural, social, or political issue is calling your attention right now?
   This might be something you’ve lived through, something you’ve witnessed, or something you’ve only recently started to understand. Let your intuition guide you.

2. Why does this issue matter to you personally?
   The more personal your connection, the more powerful your creative response will be. Your lived experience is the most important tool you have.

3. What does your creative work stand for?
   Is it about visibility? Justice? Healing? Community? What message do you want your art to carry into the world?

4. How can your chosen medium help express this vision?
   Whether you’re a painter, writer, photographer, musician, or anything in between—how does your medium hold the emotion, the story, the message you’re trying to convey?

5. What kind of impact do you hope your art will have?
   Are you trying to shift perceptions? Start conversations? Offer comfort? Educate? Advocate? Inspire?

A Final Word of Encouragement

If this all feels a little overwhelming, you’re not alone. Doing visionary work—truly visionary work—requires us to dig deep. To challenge ourselves. To get vulnerable. But the reward is immense. When you create from that raw, honest place, your work becomes more than just beautiful; it becomes transformative.

So this week, I invite you to join me. To choose an issue that matters. To explore it with curiosity, honesty, and heart. And to trust that what you create has the power to reach someone else and maybe even to change them.

I’ll be sharing my process along the way, and I’d love to hear from you too. If you feel comfortable, share your reflections, sketches, or thoughts. Let’s build a community where visionaries are born; not from perfection, but from courage.

We’re just getting started. Let’s make this week count.