Formation of Artistic Identity: Applying Themes of Narrative Identity Development in Two Artists’ Life Stories

This chapter explores two autobiographical life story interviews with American-born ‘cave painter’ David Popa and Finnish graffiti-originated artist EGS. The analysis employs some themes of narrative psychology that provide an epistemological approach for investigating the development of identity. It investigates how different aspects, related to events and personal characters, are reflected in stories people tell about their own lives and the self (McAdams, 1988; 2017). Here, the focus is in the most significant incidents or nuclear episodes in a person’s autobiographical life stories, which are characterized with feelings of continuity and change and organized around themes of agency, community, and generativity. Asserting an artistic identity involves multiple factors from individual characteristics to series of events. In addition to a special innate talent, things such as practice, resilience, social support, context, economical settings, and chance play a key role in enabling an individual to become an artist. Interestingly, the interviewed artists have sometimes deliberately and sometimes by chance shifted their artistic practice into a new and different creative mode that also changed their position in the art world. Finally, this chapter concludes that life story as a method is an underused but valuable tool in art research.