Today it was windy and cold and this beach did not see my footprints.
We spent the day in Little Italy, at an outdoor art fair, among oceans of people and a deluge of art.
Very few people seemed to be buying art. There were perhaps150 artists. I bought an exquisite and sensitive photograph. There was very little art that tempted me. As someone put it, there is much that resembles Thomas Kinkade out there. So little that seems new or authentic or careful, in a full-of-care way. Yet — so many people struggling to sell so much work! How can they stay motivated? How can they continue to spend the time, the money, the space, the materials, the energy, the soul, the grit, the courage, the disappointment that it takes to make art?
The ocean keeps on keeping on.
We keep making art because we can’t NOT.
Absolutely. I recall an anecdote about an art teacher who fervently urged students to be anything BUT an artist if they possibly could! And if that was unthinkable, why, then, be an artist because you MUST…
Exactly. You make art because you’re an artist. People make the Thomas Kinkade knockoff stuff because they’re commodifiers.