Why Make Art?

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” -Robert Henri

“As you deepen your participation in the creative act, you may come across a paradox. Ultimately, the act of self-expression isn’t really about you. Most who choose the artist’s path don’t have a choice. We feel compelled to engage, as if by some primal instinct, the same force that calls turtles toward the sea after hatching in the sand. We follow this instinct. To deny it is dispiriting, as if we are in violation of nature. If we zoom out, we see this blind impulse is always there, guiding our aim beyond ourselves. In the moment when we feel the work is taking shape, there’s a dynamic surge, followed by an urge to share, in the hopes of replicating that mysterious emotional charge in others. This is the call to self-express, our creative purpose. It’s not necessarily to understand ourselves or be understood. We share our filter, our way of seeing, in order to spark an echo in others. Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.” –The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

Erik Rittenberry (check out his wonderful Substack, Poetic Outlaws) recently shared the below advice to writers. However, I think it’s applicable to any artist in any discipline. Or anyone aspiring to produce a passion project….

Advice? 

I don’t have advice. 

Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. 

Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. 

Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. 

Or don’t. 

Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

If you don’t have to do it, don’t do it.

If you have to do it, do it. By any means necessary. Just ensure you put your whole heart and soul into it. Otherwise, you’re not really doing it.