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I agree with K-Wise, that's a good definition of what an artist is.
Although I think that the distinction between creative expression and specialist at a particular activity are too blurred, maybe in a poetic way you can say a scientist is an artist but I don't think that's what we're talking about here.
I think that to this definition you could add, an artist is also someone who feels in their innermost that they are one.
Maybe Clavus' hesitation is in the fact that he doesn't see himself as one, because of social convention (you have to be accepted as one or live off art first, supposedly), and because perhaps in his heart the "artist" is not a need, and more an enjoyment and skill he posesses.
I have always felt the "need" to create things through art (painting, sculpting, photography, music, theatre), in a way that it is vital to my sanity. Art for me is a catharsis. But of course others perceive art differently, and don't think it should be or need be this.
But I think if you need to search outside yourself to know that you are an artist, then you can't be one in it's truest sense.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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