Why Make Art?

What is the need? We can express ourselves and our feelings with words, but there again we can not do so in the same way. Science can be expressed clinically, academically but is aided by diagrams, plans, charts: emotional response can be visual. Sometimes decorative or functional. Art is an extension of being, emotional or clinical.

Making art is a fundamental human need that is often repressed as it is considered by many as unnecessary or frivolous. It is though something that some of us do. The compulsion to create is overwhelming. 

Art is not easy, though often it comes like waves. Sometimes slow and gently lapping the shore, at other times it is more frantic. Art must be worked for as well as on. It is not easy and does not relate to inspiration, it is more to do with managing idleness and ensuing that you work at it, thinking and doing, more doing rather than less preferably.

I have known many artists over the years, some made their living from art, others taught, and others survived by doing anything they could to carry on their work. Many have had two carriers in tandem that they were equally driven by. I look round my home and see works by some amazing remarkable people. A few now famous others who carried or carry on regardless. I learn from them and remember many with a mix of pride and amazement that I was lucky enough to have known them.