Being a visual artist and developing my eye over the years has brought me a sense of contribution I once thought would never be accessible to me. Creativity was never a single lane in my family. It was a whole household of women who were bigger than life, and I don’t mean average. I mean high IQs, a thirst for more, multiple business structures, and talent stacked on talent.
Art in my household wasn’t pencils and paintbrushes first. It was vocal. My mother and grandmother sang in choirs, in amateur contests, in the kitchen, in the car, everywhere. Not a day went by without one of them singing something. I guess that was a Robinson thing.
Can I sing? Yes, really well. Was it my passion? No. I’ve always been a little bashful about it, and when I got older, I learned my vocal cords had been affected by PCOS. The last time I truly enjoyed singing was with my mother, not my grandmother. My grandmother was loud, at an extremely high range. I once heard that her octave was considered the highest in the city, and her pastor at the time, Rev. Alexander, wanted her to get opera training. Even in her later years, cigarette smoking and all, she had serious range. But nurturing and fear from her own parents dimmed any chance for her to stand on a world stage. They wouldn’t let her or her sister record. Still, everyone in Manayunk who ever heard them knew that sound and never forgot it. Now Jamir just sings. We invested in his music training early, so honestly, I’m not surprised.
One Gift Opens the Door to Another
Although I’m a trained visual artist with awards and a real background in the craft, most people know me for my computer skills and entrepreneurship instead. That tells you something about how creativity works. It rarely stays in one lane. It moves, it multiplies, and it finds new rooms to live in.
I started 8x10designs after my parents. My father died on February 8th. My mother died on October 10th, seven years apart, in the same hospital, in rooms that were side by side. That’s where 8×10 designs come from, and I know it’s an anointing and a gift from God, not a coincidence.
My graphic design skills were self-taught. So was my coding and development work. I later earned a master’s in digital marketing through an accelerated program, and at one point I had five potential thesis topics lined up for doctoral study. I am, without apology, a certified geek.
I’m writing this while recovering from neck and spine surgery, and I’m thankful I’m still here to write it at all. It wasn’t until a year later that my son Jamir told me the doctors had warned him to get whoever he needed to, because I wasn’t expected to live. I did live. And the conversations I’ve had with God since then are exactly why I’m now focused on finishing the books, the art, and the designs I’ve let sit unfinished for too long.
I’ve spent years in the background, developing and helping organizations and even celebrities around the world with design work, without ever really promoting myself in the process. People would be surprised by who I’ve worked with, the rooms I’ve been in, and the conversations I’ve had. I honestly laugh sometimes at people who’ve never been around me trying to define who I am and what I do.
Protecting the Creative Vibe
As a creative person, you learn to look at everything as inspiration. But I’ve also learned that the wrong people and the wrong conversations can stump that vibe fast. I’m no longer willing to stay bogged down in unnecessary talk or around people who aren’t contributing to the wellness of becoming a better person. Protecting your creative energy isn’t selfish. It’s stewardship.
What This Means Biblically
Creativity isn’t a side gift. It’s a reflection of the God we serve. The very first thing we learn about God in Scripture is that He creates. Genesis opens with Him speaking the world into existence, and then He makes us in His own image, which means the instinct to create, to build, to sing, and to design isn’t extra. It’s part of how we were made to reflect Him.
There’s a moment in Exodus that has always stayed with me. God calls a man named Bezalel by name and fills him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to design and build the tabernacle. Creativity, in that story, isn’t separate from the Spirit of God. It’s one of the ways the Spirit shows up. Your eye for design, your ear for music, and your hand for building something out of nothing—that can be an anointing just as much as any other calling.
Romans tells us that God’s gifts and His calling are irrevocable. He doesn’t hand you a talent and then take it back because life got hard, because your voice changed, because you buried both your parents, or because you had to fight to stay alive through a surgery you weren’t expected to survive. What He gives, He means for you to keep using.
And then there’s the parable of the talents, where the servants who took what they were given and multiplied it were called good and faithful. The one who buried his gift out of fear was the one rebuked. That parable convicts me every time I think about the years I spent building for everyone else in the background, without stepping fully into my own light. Faithfulness with a gift was never meant to mean hiding it.
My grandmother’s voice never made it to a world stage because fear got there first. I think about that often, especially now. I’m not interested in repeating that pattern with the years I have left. The unfinished books, the unfinished art, the unfinished designs—those aren’t just projects to me anymore. They’re an act of faithfulness with what I was given. That’s the joy of creativity. It’s not just talent. It’s obedience to the Creator who put it in you in the first place.
