A wonderful read in it's entirety on James Gurney's Substack. From "Should Art Be About Personal Expression?":

Many of the greatest works of art have come from enigmatic individuals like Shakespeare, Vermeer, and Homer, about whom we know very little. And perhaps it doesn’t matter. The miracle of their work is that the range of their emotional expression seems to extend beyond the scope of a single person’s experience.

Each of these creators looked into themselves, but in so doing, they saw beyond themselves.

Ultimately, we end up starting from a place where we're trying to express what feels like is uniquely our's. But, the further and further you go, the more you start to see yourself more as a vessel. What pours out of the brush and pen and piano and terminal are alignments with a greater Truth.