[JonPR]

I agree with the others, it's both.
Think about why you wanted to play guitar in the first place. Almost certainly, you heard music you liked, that meant something. Probably there were guitars in it. Guitars sound cool and look cool. You want to do that!
Obviously, the first thing you when you get your own guitar is try to sound like that. You have to copy when you learn, that's where it all comes from. It's outside of you first before it goes inside.

At the same time, that music you heard DID mean something, somehow - before you ever knew it was about guitar, maybe. Something resonated with you. It's that meaning, that connection you want to get back to.
So of course, you'll be messing around, experimenting, finding sounds you like that didn't (as far as you remember) come from someone else.
Of course, it did all come from someone else. You can't learn any language without getting it from others. (We're all born with a capacity to learn language, but the one we actually learn comes from the environment. Music is the same, IMO.)
But by the time you become a player, a whole lot of that language has been absorbed (just from listening your whole life), so you feel like it's your own. There are things you want to "say", you just have to practice the techniques to let you do it.

There are some who find the compositions of others say all they want to say. Classical performers. You can't beat Bach, eg. But you get what he meant by playing his music. (You might apply your own sense of expression and interpretation, but no other alterations are permitted.)
Guitar, however, belongs to a folk tradition, to "music of the people" (which covers everything from folk to blues to rock to jazz), where every performer puts their own individual stamp on what they play; that's expected. It doesn't have to mean totally original compositions, but it does mean copying songs your way - not slaving over some note-for-note reproduction of a famous recording. (What the hell is the point of that?)