[Verse 1]
Have you ever wondered how this life goes by
Are we just here for the ride?
Do you ever think of how you got your start
And is this life some kind of weird art
And I'm just the paint in the hand of a God
Who looks down with great awe at his canvas of life
That I'm a part of a picture that's meant to be more
Than just an expensive display of an artist's love
[Chorus]
What an artist
What a painter
What a fine composer of my life
What an author
True designer
I'm forever fixed on this God
[Verse 2]
Have you ever thought of just who might be the source
Of the colors on your course?
Did it ever occur to you
That your wheres and your whys could be planned ahead
By a God that knew you before you were born
To be a part of the kingdom that he designed in advance
For the ones who would look upon
His great art and define who the author was
[Chorus]
What an artist
What a painter
What a fine composer of my life
What an author
True designer
I'm forever fixed on this God
[Chorus]
What an artist
What a painter
What a fine composer of my life
What an author
True designer
I'm forever fixed on this God
[Chorus]
What an artist
What a painter
What a fine composer of my life
What an author
True designer
I'm forever fixed on this God
[Outro]
Do you ever wonder
Do you ever question
Artist
Song Meaning
Citizen Way pushes past a single metaphor and stacks several in "Artist" — painter, composer, author, designer — treating each as an incomplete but true way of describing what God is doing with a life. "I'm just the paint in the hand of a God / Who looks down with great awe at his canvas of life" makes the singer's own agency deliberately small; the point isn't self-erasure so much as trusting a better set of hands than one's own.
The second verse pushes the timeline backward — "planned ahead... by a God that knew you before you were born" — treating identity as something authored in advance rather than assembled later by circumstance. "The colors on your course" keeps the language visual rather than abstract, tying the theology back to the painter image instead of drifting into generic providence talk.
The closing "Do you ever wonder / Do you ever question" leaves the song without a tidy final answer, which fits its own logic — a painting doesn't get to fully explain the painter, it can only point back toward one.