Community Update

Why do Artists paint, sculpt or mess with the act of creation at all?  It is certainly not to make money.  Just being an artist is expensive.  There are courses to take, materials to buy, framing costs,  studio spaces to rent, not to mention the time and energy involved.  It is totally a losing proposition.  And worst of all, you need to die before anyone will buy your work.  Even Van Gogh sold only two paintings during his lifetime.  So why would anyone choose to be an artist?
I can only answer for myself, of course, but I remember when I was a beginner early in my painting life when I looked at my painting and exclaimed, "Oh, it's me."  No, it wasn't a portrait.  It was a chair.  But something about that chair was uniquely me and at the same time uniquely that chair,  I could recognize that a little piece of myself had escaped from within me to become part of my art.   Not until later in my painting life would I recognize that each work of art also captures a portrait of time.  The moment of creation with the intimacy and the emotion of each unique brush stroke is locked into that piece of art.  That is why some pictures in a gallery bring us to a stop and demand that we search through the mysteries captured in that work, and those are some of the reasons why artists create.
More reasons soon!  Joyce Van Hornwww.joycevanhorn.com