Who Are My Favorite Artists? — A Poetic Journey Through Inspiration

Who are your favorite artists?

They ask as if names could neatly fit
The sprawling cathedral of awe
That has lived inside me for years —
As if I could summon a ranked list
Without remembering
That art is not owned,
It adopts you
When your soul needs shelter.

I smile, but I also fall silent.
Because how do you name rainfall?
How do you credit a fragrance
That reminds you of your mother’s shawl
Left drying by the window?
Sometimes I think my favorite artist
Is not even human —
It’s light,
Falling across old wood floors,
Painting everything gold
Before goodbye.

The Early Painters of My Memory

There were painters long before I knew what art was.
My grandmother —
Her brush a ladle, her canvas a flat iron pan.
The way she stirred turmeric into lentils
Felt like a Monet morning,
Yellow blooms floating in edible water.

And my father —
Bent beside his toolbox,
Each tool reflecting a quiet discipline.
He didn’t frame his work;
He built and fixed and tightened.
His art was order.
His gallery — our home.

Even the neighbor who hummed
While sweeping his veranda,
Synchronizing sound with motion,
Left imprints of rhythm on the air.
They were my early artists —
Unsigned, unseen,
Smelling of clay, spice, and laughter.

The Poets Who Made Me Pause

Then came the poets —
Those divine disturbers of thought.
Rumi whispered like sweet fire,
Inviting me to dissolve
Into something greater.
Tagore walked beside me —
His words like river songs,
Teaching me that freedom
Is both wild and gentle.

Pablo Neruda arrived
With arms full of metaphors too ripe,
As if the universe could taste like mango.
His language showed me
That lovers are also philosophers
And silence is just sound
Resting between breaths.

Mary Oliver came later —
Barefoot, luminous, full of meadows.
She taught me reverence.
Not worship of gods,
But of small things —
A blade of grass,
A sleeping fox,
A morning that forgives everything.

The Musicians Who Breathed for Me

Then music entered —
Not as sound but as oxygen.
When words failed, melody finished the sentence.
Beethoven raged white thunder inside me,
His symphonies shaking the walls of restraint.
He made me believe that deafness
Was not silence but a secret
Only the brave could interpret.

Meanwhile, Ravi Shankar infused my veins
With sitar strings that sounded like galaxies simmering.
A note, stretched until it begged for rest,
Taught me patience,
Taught me devotion.

Then came Freddie Mercury —
That impossible voice,
A comet disguised as a man.
He showed me that flamboyance
Is another form of sincerity,
That hearts break loudly
And beautifully.

Later, I found solace in Arvo Pärt —
Minimal, divine, monastic.
His silences held hands with sound.
Between his notes,
I discovered prayer.

And in the murmurs of modern voices —
Adele’s ache, Coldplay’s sky-soaked anthems,
AR Rahman’s eternal fusion of soil and spirit —
I heard my own longing reflected back,
Undefended yet whole.

The Painters Who Changed My Eyes

If sound was breath, painting became sight.
Van Gogh — that trembling pilgrim of color —
Gifted me madness in blue and sincerity in yellow.
He saw the world not as it was
But as it burned to become.
When I stood before his “Starry Night,”
I didn’t see stars.
I saw his heartbeat, still pulsing.

Frida Kahlo —
Fierce, fractured, unyielding —
Taught me how to paint pain
Without asking for pity.
Her art bled,
But in beautiful symmetry.
She allowed suffering to dress itself
In blossoms and defiance.

Leonardo whispered precision,
Michelangelo thundered divinity,
But it was Georgia O’Keeffe
Who held my gaze longest.
Her flowers were not flowers.
They were worlds —
Soft, spiraling, unapologetic.
She turned vulnerability into terrain.

And beyond the museums —
Street artists, graffiti poets,
Muralists hiding under moonlight,
Reminded me that rebellion too
Has its palette.

The Filmmakers Who Dream for the World

Cinema — the most complex mirror.
Satyajit Ray crafted empathy on celluloid,
Each frame carrying truth like pollen.
Christopher Nolan bent time,
Taught me that reality
Can be a Möbius strip of emotion.
Miyazaki built skies with wings of wonder;
In his world, forests breathe and spirits weep.
His brush was compassion animated.

I carry these images inside me —
Scenes that never fade:
A bicycle on a dusty path,
A hallway exploding into light,
A tear falling precisely
When you decide to look away.

The Artists Who Are Not Famous

There are others —
The ones without Wikipedia pages.
The child drawing stars on concrete.
The busker who plays flute at Marine Drive
For coins, not applause.
The stranger who stitches broken dreams
Into quilts of everyday survival.

Their anonymity is their art.
They perform without audience,
Create without validation.
Sometimes the truest artist
Is the one too tired to call it art.

The Writers Who Named My Shadows

Virginia Woolf built rooms
For solitude to dance in.
Her prose — dense, fluid, merciful —
Carried my thoughts
When I had none of my own.

Haruki Murakami taught me
That surrealism isn’t escape;
It’s acknowledgment —
That our inner worlds
Are as strange as Tokyo at midnight.

Toni Morrison carved truth into language
That refused to flinch.
She made memory holy
And history personal.
In her sentences,
I learned that art
Could also be resistance.

The Artists Inside Moments

If you ask me again
Who are my favorite artists,
I might instead point at moments.
The rain tracing Morse code on my window.
A candle trembling before prayer.
A couple arguing in half-whispered affection
At a quiet café.

Art is not ownership;
It happens to you.
It unfolds when beauty and ache
Hold hands briefly
And decide not to let go too soon.

Sometimes a favorite artist
Is a single sunrise
That paints your past
And forgives your future.

The Unnamed Collaborations

There’s something communal about art —
No masterpiece stands alone.
Every stroke echoes another,
Every song carries borrowed dust.
When a dancer moves,
She moves for centuries —
Her body holding muscle memories
Of everyone who danced before her.

So my favorite artists
Are a lineage,
Not a list.
They speak across mediums,
Across mortality itself.
They whisper through each other —
Through me, through you.

When I write,
A fragment of Rumi hums in my syntax.
When I listen to Rahman,
Somewhere Van Gogh’s paint stirs.
When a street performer smiles mid-song,
Frida’s eyebrows crack into laughter.
All art is conversation — eternal and porous.

The Art of Being Human

Perhaps my truest favorite artist
Is the human spirit —
Broken, healing, repeating.
It paints civilizations,
Sings lamentations,
Builds hospitals and heartbreaks alike.

We are all artists,
Even when we fail to notice.
We sculpt time by the choices we make,
Compose emotions through the lives we affect.
A mother’s lullaby, a lover’s silence,
A friend’s unfinished message —
These are brushstrokes too.

Art isn’t confined to pages, walls, or screens.
It’s the heartbeat we mistake
For routine.
It’s what remains
After everything else is explained.

Inside a Canvas

So when I am gone,
Don’t ask who my favorite artists were.
Instead, ask what they left inside me.

Ask about the evenings I stared
At the sky too long,
Just to see if Van Gogh was right.
Ask about the letters I never sent
Because Neruda already wrote them better.
Ask about the way silence settled
After Arvo Pärt’s music ended —
Like snow that forgives the ground
For being ordinary.

Ask about the warmth I carry
From my grandmother’s kitchen,
The rhythm of her ladle,
The scent of survival.
Because sometimes,
The only art worth mentioning
Is the life we try to make beautiful
Even when no one is watching.

So, who are my favorite artists?
Every soul that ever tried
To turn pain into color,
Silence into sound,
And loneliness into language.