Painter Mernie Buchanan seems to echo her words, but from a different stance and with wry humor: "I keep making art because people tell me my work makes them happy. This means I don't have to get a therapy license and a practical job."
I agree with these various responses, among others, and know there's truth in them. I don't think there's only one reason why any of us is involved in art-making. Some of us begin to feel funky when we're not creatively engaged, as though something were missing. Creating is how we indulge our curiosity, leading us to explore, experiment, discover, and expand. Knowing how much I am touched, stimulated, informed, inspired, enlivened, and delighted when I view, feel, read, or hear diverse forms of art, I, too, want to provide such experiences for others. Along with the frustrations and failures inherent in the territory of making art, there's also playfulness and fun. And there's tremendous fulfillment and satisfaction when we embody our possibilities. As Jack Ruszel puts it, "It feels like sculpting is what I'm supposed to be doing."
I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us--albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human's efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.
Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners...When an idea thinks it has found somebody--say, you--who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit...try to wave you down...not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention.
Why do you make art?
Which of the responses resonate with your own thinking about art-making?