Masks from Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Bali

*

an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

The mission is to stay hungry.  Once you need to know, you can proceed and draw distinctions.  From the heat of this necessity, you reach out to content – the play, the theme, or question – and begin to listen closely, read, taste, and experience it.  You learn to differentiate and interpret the sensations received while engaged with content.  The perception forms the  basis for expression.   

Have you ever been so curious about something that the hunger to find out nearly drives you to distraction?  The hunger is necessity.  As an artist, your entire artistic abilities are shaped by how  necessity has entered your life and then how you sustain it.  It is imperative to maintain artistic curiosity and necessity.  It is our job to maintain in this state of feedforward as long as humanly possible.  Without necessity as the fuel for expression, the content remains theoretical.  The drive to taste, discover, and express what thrills and chills the soul is the point.  Creation must begin with personal necessity rather than conjecture about audience taste or fashion.

Anne Bogart in and then, you act:  making art in an unpredictable world 

Comments are welcome!