Artists, you need artists: An Open Letter

Artists,

When was the last time you made time to seek out other art and artists. See it with your own eyes? Art is popping up everywhere, every day. Blossoms of bacteria. Feeding on emotional vulnerability, hope, longing, humanity. The relationship is symbiotic. The more we need, the more there is. The richer the lives it feeds, the richer the artists it produces.

Until we have evolved to the point that we begin trying to define art. Impossible.  But important that we try. The artists are everywhere. Keep your eyes open until you see the art in the child’s hand that drops the crayon into the dirt, until the old man playing the saxophone under the streetlight on an abandoned corner makes your heart yearn for something it has never known. Look further.

Run down dark alleys, crawl through the forest, float down the river. Go where all the people are, go where no one can be found. Chase, dig, unravel, until you find something that sets your hair on fire. A true master of the craft that sends you crashing blindly back to your creative space, digging through the supplies, hands shaking, heart exploding with what that singular contact has created.

Artists. One of your most important jobs is to seek out one another. Not to band together. Not to create an isolated community. Artists ARE isolated by nature. Inspiration lives in the artist’s heart but to connect with another artist, regardless of the medium. Regardless of the style, vision, genre. A hard connect with another artist is rocket fuel for the spirit.

So that you say.

“I have seen this thing. So perfect and inspiring that I felt something break in me, and be rebuilt. My hands felt empty because they were not working. The delight and passion has ignited a kindred cry in my own artist heart. To the work. To the work. To the work!”

And do not be fooled into believing that art lives in museums and in theatres and in institutes. Art lives and breaths wherever the artist happens to be. Trained or untrained. Traditional or free-form. If you are moved, the art is there, whether you are at a gallery showing or in an abandoned alley. Art knows no class, no culture, and no boundaries.

So our job is for them. The great Them. But our job is also for each other. Like a chemical reaction across a matrix of artists. Passing the momentum to one another so that one of us will go supernova and blow up the whole damn world. With Art.

Much love, Michelle

Tags: art, artist, community, inspiration, painting, sculpting, theatre