Why you must have secrets

On the electric power of making mystery art

Collage by me, 2025.

The photograph is of a portal made of rocks, stacked rocks. I say ‘portal’. It is a circle facing the air. I can only presume stepping through it will take you to the place you see beyond.

The caption on the photograph: A mystery artist has been creating sculptures using natural stones high among the hills of England’s Lake District. This stone circle frames the view of Borrowdale.

Mystery Artist?!? What an exhilarating concept!

I have always been drawn to secrets and mysteries: hidden spaces, impossible questions, unknowable things. I grew up reading the Famous Five. I was briefly obsessed with the 1990s computer game Eagle Eye Mysteries. In high school, I put anonymous flyers featuring macabre haikus on all the campus noticeboards. Back when it was the thing one did, I briefly hosted a speakeasy in a warehouse. So.

It’s worth noting: not every silly little secret thing I’m talking about is the same. Some we wish to remain hidden. Others we want to reveal. Secrets are for keeping. Mysteries are for figuring. When we have information we wish to withhold we don’t want to be discovered. When we want to discover something, we hope nothing is withheld.

And this distinction is the (tantalizing) point of this memo: to have secrets as an artist is to dabble in both sides. To be both intensely public, and intensely private.

For instance, what I loved reading about ‘Borrowdale Banksy’ is that any one of the handful of hikers interviewed about the art could have been the artist. All claimed *not* to be, but of course a mystery artist would do that. Imagine the thrill!

Does one need to have secrets as an artist?

No.

Heavy pause … no.

BUT BUT BUT

There is some powerful energy in knowing something no-one else does. To make things and put them in the world, to have people experience your art without knowing it was you … there’s a real electricity to that.

My hunch is if you were an artist making both non-mystery and mystery art, the electricity from the mystery art would flow into your non-mystery art making.

It’s just a hunch. A hunch I thought I’d turn into a small secret mission, for whomever dares to accept it.

THE MISSION

Make a piece of mystery art this week. You don’t have to be an artist. The idea here is simply to put something beautiful, or interesting, or unusual in public view, in a place you might not expect to encounter it. You could make a drawing and put it in a library book. You could buy a little figurine and stick in a garden. You could write a macabre haiku and stick it on a noticeboard when no-one is looking. Anything!

I’m going to do it too! Maybe more than once.

Have fun being weird and secret,
Lucy