"The way to go in the art world is to get an MFA or drop out of high school," he said. "Even better, drop out of junior high." Daws not only graduated from high school, he went to college for a semester before coming to his senses. In school, he was a painter. One day in class, students considered the following question: If someone offered to pay them a decent living to make art under the sole condition that they never show it, would they take the deal?
"I was the only person who raised my hand," he said. "I loved the process of painting. What happens to the paintings interested me less. The work I'm doing now I wouldn't do if I couldn't show it to people. I'd leave it at the level of ideas, because fabrication is a pain in the ass."From The Pennies of Jack Daws
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On one level, like Daws says, it depends on the kind of art you make: if it requires an audience to be complete, why invest the time, energy, and money if it couldn't be shown?
On the other hand, if art is the single most important ongoing practice in your life, your raison d'etre, then don't you need to find a way to keep making it whether or not it's going to be shown?
What's at the core to sustain us, beyond the outside interest? In school it's easy because we have a built in audience and feedback loop, so we can indulge in process- and materials-oriented exploration. But when we are on our own, in order to keep going and not become one of the 95% who stop making art within 5 years of leaving school, we have to find a profound deeply personal reason that compels us to stay engaged in such a challenging and often painful way of life, especially when it seems like no one else cares or appreciates it.
What is it?
What enables some and not others to keep taking that leap of faith to make their own work, regardless of what others think?
I believe the answer to that question becomes a self-sustaining, growing source of integrity that not only feeds the quality of one's work and strength of practice, but also has the potential to free oneself from the burdens of envy, jealousy, and narcissistic greed and insecurity that stifle so many others who've tried to walk the same path, an extreme example of whom are those who end up splashing paint on the work of others and going to jail for lighting incendiary stink bombs at gallery openings.
So maybe part of our work as artists is to identify, tap into, nurture and protect that source.
What is your source?
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