WHY MAKE ART ?

Many times during my life as a professional artist I have asked myself:
“What am I doing this for and does it matter?”
Many people contribute in a concrete and obvious way to the well being and progress of humankind but the artist dances or plays music; some paint or write poetry and many of us ask:
“What is the purpose of art?”
And yet art has existed as long as people have had time to pause and reflect on their conscious existence.There are many factors which motivate artists but most of these are lost with the individual’s passing. Still the work may continue to contribute to the social fabic long after the individual artist is forgotten.

Through history the artist has been the guardian of the human spirit. The poet, the painter, the dancer....we have all been charged with creating work which will preserve from one generation to the next the warp upon which current events are woven. Among those spiritual threads which wind back through time we find love, honesty, beauty, truth, community and compassion. This guardianship is the work of the artist because we cannot trust any social institution with that job; not government, not historians, not big buisness, not religion (At least not yours !) not the media, not even the schools. Only the work of the artist can be trusted with the human spirit.