The youthfulness of mature creativity

What part of you makes art? What age are you when you paint? Over the years, in my relationship to my creativity, I’ve sometimes experienced myself as an attention-hungry child, crying out to be noticed, and as a restless teenager, hungry for for someone to tell me how to be cool, or uncertain and afraid of failure. These are all needs formed in our early lives that we can get drawn back towards as we paint or create. But what happens if we make art from the place of a secure, playful child or a confident, curious teenager? A secure child can be absorbed in their own imagination and express what they make with confident delight in being themselves. A curious teenager can take in the world and experiment with how they connect with it, forming authority by discerning what works for them and discarding what doesn’t. This is what I call mature creativity and it comes with a healthy youthfulness and sense of play. I know when I’m painting from these parts of me and I know when I’m not. Where do you paint from?