Why do I make art?

 Until last week I would say "because I have to, it's a compulsion", which is a slightly glib answer, and one my 'sales' persona would be pleased with. I've had some interesting and difficult conversations in the last week, 'difficult' in a good way. Something another student shared reminded me why I started making art, and of a quote from the psychotherapist, Carl Rogers:

Yet there is, I believe, a much more important reason for my writing. It seems to me that I am still -- inside -- the shy boy who found communication very difficult in interpersonal situations: who wrote love letters that were more eloquent than his direct expressions of love; who expressed himself freely in high school themes, but felt himself too "odd" to say the same things in class. That boy is still very much part of me. Writing is my way of communicating with a world to which, in a very real sense, I feel I do not quite belong. I wish very much to be understood, but I don't expect to be. Writing is the message I seal in the bottle and cast into the sea. My astonishment is that people on an enormous number of beaches - psychological and geographical - have found the bottles and discovered that the messages speak to them. So I continue to write.

I am in danger of making art because I want to be successful, because I want to be able to identify as 'an artist', because I want people to say 'wow'. That is not healthy, for me, or my art. I started making art as a means of self-expression, to share with others the fact that I have a secret inner world, that I am a world in myself, not just a puppet of flesh. The other student also pointed out that a lot of my art is very vulnerable - it opens up a place that a lot of people would rather hide, or pretend doesn't exist. I think I need to take heed and lean into that. I need to reclaim 'success' and I think it needs to be that I create art, and that my art engages others - in which there is a fair amount of 'traditional' success to unpack - it implies my art needs some sort of audience and platform, for instance.