How I (Accidentally) Became an Artist After 40

Hi, I’m Katie Brooks.

By day, I teach teachers how to teach language and literacy.By night (and weekends and stolen pockets of time), I’m an “amateur hobby potter” who has somehow ended up with strangers buying my work online.

This blog is for the people who love handmade pottery, for other potters, and for the people who follow my little corner of the internet and secretly wonder, “Could I ever make art too?”

If you take one thing away from this first post, I hope it’s this:

You can become an artist. Not because you popped out of the womb throwing perfect mugs,but because art is a skill you can learn.

I’m going to be very transparent about the messy, imperfect, deeply human learning that got me here—ADHD, anxiety, working memory and all.

The Second-Grade Drawing Class That Shut the Door

In second grade, I took a special after-school drawing class. I walked in with zero prior art classes and a lot of excitement. Many of the other kids had already taken multiple classes. They seemed to know exactly what to do. I… did not. The teacher would demonstrate, and the other kids’ drawings just appeared on their papers like magic. Mine did not look like hers, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t understand why it seemed so easy for them and so hard for me.

I felt:

• confused

• ashamed

• and incapable of making “good” art.

Some of the criticism came from the teacher, who grew frustrated that I wasn’t making the art the way she wanted. The rest came from me.

With ADHD, you get used to certain messages:

·       “You’re lazy.”

·       “You’re not trying hard enough.”

·       “You’re not paying attention.”

·       “You’re such an airhead.” (It was the 1980s, after all.)

Add a frustrated art teacher on top of that, and second-grade me drew a very clear conclusion:

“I’m not an artist.”

I didn’t have the language back then for “differentiated teaching and learning” or “attentional control” or “I need to try things my own way sometimes.” All I knew was: I was doing it “wrong,” and I felt defeated, so I shut down that part of myself and quietly stepped away from art.

The Long, Quiet “I’m Not an Artist” Years

That one belief—I’m not an artist—hung around for decades.

It showed up in all the usual ways:

• I avoided art classes completely.

• I downplayed my creativity, even though I knew I was a creative problem-solver and idea person.

• I felt a deep pang when I saw other people making beautiful art. It looked like a world I wasn’t allowed to belong to.

I’d occasionally think, “Maybe I should try a class,” and then immediately shut it down:Why? You’re just going to be bad at it.

I grew up being praised for success, not for effort or process or growth. If something didn’t come easily—even academically—I didn’t want to do it. I leaned hard into the areas where I excelled and built my self-esteem there.

Art stayed on the outside of my life: something I admired from afar, not something I did.

Teaching Growth Mindset… and Realizing I Didn’t Have One

Fast-forward to my 40s. I’m teaching a reading methods class for future teachers who will work with multilingual and neurodiverse students. It’s a tough class: lots of dense research, complex concepts, and a steep learning curve. Many of my students are grappling with ideas they’ve never experienced themselves.

I spend a lot of time talking about:

• growth mindset

• learning from mistakes

• trying again, even when it’s hard

• supporting students who’ve struggled and may feel like they’re “not good at reading”

One day, in the middle of all this, it hit me: I ask my students to step out of their comfort zones all the time… and I don’t do that voluntarily. At all. If I absolutely have to do something I’m not good at, I’ll do it. Reluctantly. But willingly choose to do something I expect to be bad at? No thank you. I realized I had a very solid fixed mindset about myself in certain areas—especially anything that looked like “art.” If I truly believed what I was teaching, I needed to live it. I needed to do something I didn’t think I’d be good at and let myself be a messy beginner.

Glass Blowing: Intimidated, Curious, and Surprisingly Okay

My first leap was… glass blowing. This was not a gentle baby step. Walking into that studio, I felt completely intimidated. Glass blowing is hot, fast, and dramatic. It was absolutely outside my comfort zone, but it looked really cool, so I signed up.

Some of the other students had experience. I did not. My learning differences showed up in very predictable ways:

• I needed instructions more than once.

• Multi-step processes disappeared from my working memory almost immediately.

• I needed to practice, fail, and problem-solve on my own to really learn the techniques.

(If you’re also an ADHD person, you’re probably nodding right now.)

I went in with low expectations: I just want to have fun. It’s okay if I’m bad at this. I want to do something fun even if I do it badly. It turned out I wasn’t terrible. I was… okay. And I could see that with more practice, I’d get better. The problem was practical: the class was expensive, and there wasn’t enough open studio time for me to get the repetition my brain needed. So I went looking for something more sustainable.

Discovering Clay (and Why My Cheapness Helped)

This is how I ended up with clay in my hands.

I signed up for pottery partly because I’m cheap. Glass blowing is expensive, and having a glass studio at home is... not in my budget (or my house wiring).

Pottery, on the other hand:

• had more open studio time so I could practice

• was something I could eventually do at home

• tapped into that same “cool, I made a thing!” feeling—but with less risk of third-degree burns, unless I’m too eager to open the kiln (more on that later).

The first time I sat at the wheel, I was both excited and slightly frustrated. Centering clay is hard. Like, really hard. Add in an ADHD squirrel chorus simultaneously singing 7 different songs in my head, and my chances of centering go way down. The thing is, you can’t throw clay if your brain is chasing 12 thoughts at once. The wheel is brutally honest. So I started to notice something:

• When I focused on the feel of the clay in my hands,

• The sound of the wheel,

• The subtle shift as the lump became centered.

I dropped into a meditative hyperfocus. The tactile nature of clay became a mindfulness practice. My nervous system exhaled. My brain, for once, was doing one thing. And honestly? I loved it from day one.