As I look back over my life I realize that art and painting have always been with me, it's not simply that art is ubiquitous in my life, it is vital. My artistic practice is both a sacred and a sustaining part of who I am, my personal ecology.
That brings us to the question... why are you here? ... why are you interested? ... what are you interested in?
Are you drawn in to the color, the composition, the movement, the meaning... are you also a practicing artist or lover of art?
Art is the annihilation of individuality and ego into the crushing Unification of All Being at once... and also the journey back across those primordial waters to the birth of some new thing. This is the real practice of the true artist, the perennial philosophy, an act that can not be mastered, the antithesis of craft, but instead, a beautiful attachment to live.
The statement must be qualified of course, the art of the painter differs from the art of the writer, each one must in fact work within a particular imitation of skills and tools in order to manifest their art in the material world, but craft alone can only reproduce a perfect copy, whereas art reveals new possibilities, new life.
Art is not the starry night unencumbered by city lights, but the story of the star god who descended and bore children, an experiment in consciousness. Art is not the answer, but it can be a question, a tiny illumination of real being, something more than just an original, something with a heart and a soul.