Every now and then an artist may approach a certain project or idea, and without warning a fear sets in. A fear that revolves around the imagined pointlessness of their technique or project, freezing creative and productive capacities with questions like 'Why should I start this project?', 'Why make this peice of art?', 'Why do this at all?' All of which can be averaged into one short, piercing question;
'Why?'
There are two sorts of answers to this question; one simple, one not-so-simple. The latter fills books, magazines, blogs, websites, bookstores, and libraries across the world. While we should give these answers serious consideration, it strikes me as rather funny that most of the theorizing and defining-it-all, is done by people whom do not actually make art. Artists, on the other hand, have access to both forms of answers. And a good thing for us that one is so simple, since the other is practically maddening. Our answer is out of reach for our spectators and lookers-on, except in their own feild.
As Artists, we should think long and hard about the more complicated answers to this question, but not get lost in it. Our main concern should be in the making of art. Production. Producing. Getting the work done. We should give deep consideration to our work, but at some point, we actually need to do it.
With the pressure of producing work, we may find ourselves getting hung up on the quality issue. It's all well and good to do a ton of work, but even scarier than the idea of not making art, is the idea of making bad art. So after we exhaust ourselves werestling with the question 'why?', we may not have the drive to handle the idea of our making a bad peice of art. After all, if the work is shit, what will all the people who we may think to be smarter than us (peers, professors, critics, etc.) say?
It's easy to get caught up in this, but we need to remember that not everything needs to be shown. Not everything needs to be worked over in discussion as if it were the triumph of one's career. There are sketches, rough drafts, and models, and mock-ups that go into the making of a good peice of art. Not every little scribble you do needs to be up for critique. So show the good stuff, and do what you will with the bad stuff. I'd recommend putting it up where you can see it every day, that way you won't be able to rest until you've done something decent.
Our focus should be in the creation, the ideas, the doing. When presented with the question of why to do anything at all, the simple answer we can present with confidence; Because we are Artists.
