To become an artist of might does not come without a price. To reach in and touch the eternal flame of divine fire, the artist must first purge himself of social conditioning, smugness, personality, ego—hubris, and self-deception.

The artist must strip himself bare of all veneer to reveal the self—only then will the power of creation partner and work with the artist, whom we shall now call true.

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Is art a language? Unequivocally.

As music communicates with notes and pitch that enter the ear and vibrate throughout the body, the fine artist speaks with a visual palette of shape, form, color, and feeling that enters the eye on its way to the soul. Is it music? Is it art? Who decides?

The wide scene is that it’s all art, but the picture of that view needs defining—not for comparing, but for an awareness of distinguishing one form from another.

The fine art I’m writing about is personal art, art that is alive. If you don’t know what I mean by “alive,” then you must make it your cultural goal to find out so that someday you, like the connoisseur, will understand.

Nothing is free.

An artist carves out new territory with no preconceived notions about pleasing a public. Until the artist’s work is recognized by his audience, creating can make for tough times in the marketplace.

A hack (you know who you are) produces something he feels the public wants, which is inverse to the artist’s nature. Like Damocles, the hack works with the sword of a focus group dangling precariously overhead. A hack can have the potential to be a great artist; it is fear of exposing his true self that keeps him in the land of mediocre.

The true artist knows that a visceral reaction to his art is better than a lukewarm comment. I love it, or even I hate it is better than hearing: “Oh, it’s interesting.”

"There are no ‘plain facts’ in the history of art—or any history of anything else, for that matter; only degrees of plausibility.... Yet we sense that Gauguin, although he tried to share his experience [spirit], he remains an outsider; he could paint pictures about faith, but not from faith.”

—H.W. Hanson, History of Art

What’s all this about abstract art being modern?

Abstract art is as old as humankind. Look at prehistoric art, ancient art, art of the Middle Ages, art of the Renaissance, and you’ll find abstract art there as well.

The completed “abstract” piece is not abstract to the artist. After all, while abstract art may not be revealing external nature, it is revealing internal nature.