Interview With Author Rachel Marie Kang
Rachel Marie Kang is an author, artist, speaker, and coach from New York. She is the founder of The Fallow House, an online community that helps artists cultivate their creativity, and the author of Let There Be Art: The Pleasure and Purpose of Unleashing the Creativity within You, a book that explores the purpose of creativity, and encourages readers that we were indeed created to create.
She has also been featured in Christianity Today, (in)courage, and Proverbs 31 Ministries. Today, she lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children.
Rachel’s deep, thoughtful, purposeful approach to both life and art is one to emulate. Read on to learn about how she came to find her creative voice, and what living out the life of an artist is like.
Q: What was the process to you discovering how integral art and creativity were to the human experience, and to your own life?
A: I didn’t understand how integral art and creativity were to the human experience until I knew how integral it was for my own heart. This is a journey that started over ten years ago—and I hope it never ends. In my college writing theory class, I was challenged by the feedback of my professor. In response to my writing, in which I was exploring my own internal thoughts, he invited me to look beyond myself. He challenged me to observe the world and take into account the settings and stories that surrounded me. This feedback, initially received with reluctance, eventually helped to expand my worldview. This was also the beginning of daring to see beyond art solely as a way to self-soothe. In and through this, I began to see that art—in all its vastness—lends itself for all things…and for all people.
Q: What are the challenges and difficulties you’ve faced in living out the life of a creative?
A: What’s hard about living a life of creativity is the fact that seasons of life change. And so, with it, seasons of creativity also change. If physical abilities change, then creative capacity can and will change with it. This is the truth of my story, as I’ve walked through multiple seasons of hardships in my health. The most difficult part about this was letting dreams die. In high school, I was diagnosed with Rheumatic fever, an autoimmune disease, which stripped me of my ability to sing. This season of sickness ultimately led to the death of my dream to be a singer. As of late, I have found myself in a similar season of walking through chronic illness while also longing to cultivate creativity.
And, yet, while I will never pass over the real pain of these past passions and dead dreams, I will always profess the many ways in which I learned to pivot in the midst of them. In and through every bend and turn of the road, I learned the art of perseverance and how to remain in the pursuit of those things beneath the creativity—beauty, truth, memory, hope—which my soul truly pines to express and understand.
Q: Which artists/writers/works have inspired you the most, and why?
A: I love poetry, I love plays, I love poems, I love paintings, I love photography, I love picture books, I love motion pictures. I love it all. I am inspired both widely and deeply. Shakespeare was one of my earliest influences, having taken a Shakespeare college course in high school. As of late, I’ve been inspired by the work of composer Hans Zimmer, director Christopher Nolan, memoirist Maya Angelou, and painters Frida Kahlo and Willem van Aelst. My favorite writer is Joan Didion. The way she spins sentences with meaning and metaphor, grief and humor—her prose takes my breath away. Of prose, I love what poet Mary Oliver writes: “Prose flows forward bravely and, often, serenely, only slowly exposing emotions. Every character, every idea piques our interest, until the complexity of it is its asset; we begin to feel a whole culture under and behind it.”
There is something about Joan Didion’s prose, something about the way she tells stories with fluent force. I dreamed of meeting her and still grieve her recent passing. I’m so thankful her legacy remains in this world.
Q: What’s your favorite book?
A: My answer to this question changes for different reasons and in different seasons, but a longtime favorite of mine is The Baron in Trees by Italo Calvino. It’s about a young baron, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, who flees an argument with his father to go live in the trees of their home garden for the rest of his life. I love this book for its action and adventure, as well as its love and sense of loss.
Q: Tell us more about the inspiration behind your book, Let There Be Art.
A: This wasn’t the book I set out to write. The plan was to write a book solely for writers, but my editorial team suggested I write and speak into all of creativity. As I wrote Let There Be Art, I realized—this is the message I was always meant to write. I have been cultivating creativity all my life. I wrote and worked on Let There Be Art through the COVID-19 pandemic, pregnancy, and chronic illness with the hope of telling the truth that art is not for the elite; it's for all who strain to see and shine light in this sometimes dark, dark world. It’s for entrepreneurs and executives, thinkers and tinkerers, poets and pastors, students and stay-at-home moms.
I wrote this book, soulfully and strategically, speaking into many forms of creativity—all the everyday ways in which we already live it out. This isn’t a book that will tell you how to paint better, write better, dance better. It’s a book that will inspire you to look deeper, live deeper, and love deeper.
You can follow Rachel on Instagram @rachelmariekang and visit her website here: rachelmariekang.com
