Why I Believe You Can’t Truly Separate the Art from the Artist
There’s this popular idea floating around—“You can separate the art from the artist.” People say it to make themselves feel better about liking something when the creator’s personal life or choices are messy.
But every time I hear that, I pause. Because I just don’t think it’s that simple.
Art Doesn’t Come From a Vacuum
When we create—whether it’s a book, a song, a painting, or even a handmade bracelet—it comes from somewhere inside us. Our experiences, beliefs, upbringing, and worldview all influence what we make.
So when someone says, “You can separate the art from the artist,” I always think: Can you, though? Because the act of creation is personal by nature. The characters we write, the worlds we build, the themes we explore—they’re all born from the artist’s mind and heart. Even in fiction, every decision we make—what a character fears, loves, hides, or seeks—is filtered through who we are.
That doesn’t mean every character is the artist, but it does mean that every piece of art carries the artist’s DNA.
A Human Metaphor for Art
Here’s how I see it: you can give a child up for adoption, and that child can go on to live a completely different life with new parents who love and nurture them. But genetically, that child still carries the DNA of the biological parents. You can’t change that.
Art is the same way. Once we put it into the world, it might find new meaning with readers, viewers, or listeners. It can even take on a life of its own. But it will always carry traces of the person who made it. Because it came from them.
The Creative Imprint We Leave Behind
I’ve written before about how grief shaped my voice, how growing up around death and loss became part of my storytelling lens. That didn’t happen on purpose—it’s just who I am. My lived experience shows up in the atmosphere I build, in the way my characters process fear or longing or faith.
This doesn’t make my work autobiographical. But it does mean my stories carry my emotional fingerprints. They hold my rhythm, my worldview, my obsessions, and my questions. Every artist, consciously or not, leaves that imprint.
Psychologists call this “creative identity transfer”—the way an artist’s internal life becomes embedded in their art. Studies in artistic cognition show that personal values, memories, and emotional history heavily influence both creative choices and audience perception.
Even when artists try to separate themselves from the work, traces of who they are remain—because the imagination can’t operate in isolation from experience.
Here’s some resources on it:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2713374523000031
https://ir.ung.edu/work/sc/1eb4e40b-b92d-48fb-a06a-b1473ee1f9e1
The Debate, and Why It Still Matters
Now, I get the argument: sometimes we want to separate the art from the artist. Maybe the artist did something harmful, or we just don’t want their personal life to ruin our enjoyment of what they made. And that’s fair. The conversation about accountability versus appreciation is complicated and deeply personal.
But even then, I think what people really mean is: I choose to engage with the art despite the artist. Not that they are actually separate. Because they never fully are. You can’t surgically remove the soul that birthed the work.
For Me as an Artist
I’ve made peace with the fact that everything I write is an extension of me. My culture, my grief, my spirituality, my humor—they’re all woven in, whether I intend it or not.
So when readers say, “Your writing feels so personal,” that’s not coincidence. That’s the nature of art. It’s born from us.
We may polish it, package it, or distance ourselves from it once it’s published—but its core? That’s our creative DNA. And like a child out in the world, it will always carry something of us no matter where it goes or who embraces it next.
Let Me Show You How it Turned Out
SaleProduct on sale
The Ordinary Bruja: Book One of Las Cerradoras Series – Johanny Ortega
$2.99 – $23.99Price range: $2.99 through $23.99 Marisol Espinal has spent her life trying to disappear from her family’s whispers of magic, from the shame of not belonging, from the truth she refuses to face. She’s always wanted to be someone else: confident, capable, extraordinary.
But when strange visions, flickering shadows, and warnings written in her mother’s hand begin to stalk her, Marisol is forced to confront her deepest fear: what if she isn’t extraordinary at all? What if she’s painfully ordinary?
Yet Hallowthorn Hill doesn’t call to just anyone. And the more Marisol resists, the stronger its pull becomes. The past she’s buried claws its way back, and something in the mist is watching—waiting for her to remember.
If Marisol cannot face the truth about who she is and where she comes from, the same darkness that destroyed her ancestors will claim her, too.
Somewhere in the shadows, something knows her name.
And it’s time for Marisol to learn why.
SKU: Category: Books, Books for Adults, Fantasy, Fiction Books, Horror, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism, Women’s Fiction Tags: ancestral magic, atmospheric fiction, books about brujas, dark fantasy, Dominican folklore, haunted inheritance, Isabel Cañas fans, Latine fantasy, magical realism, psychological horror, Silvia Moreno-Garcia fans, spooky reads, supernatural mystery, The Ordinary Bruja, witchy books 
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