"Art to the artist is much a natural and biological activity as growing new cells in the body, much a part of the living reality of life itself. His imagination creating for him an extension of life itself."

It’s no joke to be an artist: you carry worlds-within-worlds on your shoulders. For the transformation of the world, from beauty to more, greater beauty. Not everyone who picks up the brush to paint, or strings words together, is a painter or poet.

The artist—painter, sculptor, poet — if loyal and true to his calling, his profession, creates worlds-within-worlds, the products of his inner visions and grandest dreams made visible reality to the beholder. In them, he challenges concepts and theories about reality by provoking our thoughts and awakening our intellect, by working our reason, he questions even our thinking on life—if we use as foundation that which we believe to be, the reality of things. We have eyes but are blind. We see things we only wish to see. The artist turns things upside down and stand them on their heads. Did it ever occur to us that our heads could be…empty?

Things are difficult as they are. People are more inclined to be serious about their petty concerns than they are wise about things. The artist calls attention to this pernicious tendency, so that the seriousness we take for what is reality he puts a smile to, a kind of Cheshire cat smile. He does this in a way that if you gaze long enough at any of his paintings, the painting not only vanishes like so much hot bombast from the mouths of our politicos, you also find yourself vanishing along with the painting.

Indeed he is saying with a tinge of sarcasm that there is just too much seriousness enveloping us—whether it is the serious antics of the regime, the laughable concerns of the impotent opposition that smacks of the moro-moro, or the impotent posturing of our intellectuals and artists. In between all this like a dash of salt rubbed on a raw wound, stare blankly the poses of our society’s art lovers.

Very succinctly, the artist stings creation awake. Actually he focuses on one painting done in the realistic vein: the landscape. That even the ignorant will be able to see what it sees. It could just be a photograph of a landscape. Very succinctly, the artist is telling us that the landscape painting is “our” apprehension of reality.Thus, most of us accept reality to be what we like to project before us. To the economist, banker, businessman, it is the huge windfall of money. To the pleasure-seekers, endless pleasures; to the romantic…love? But to the artist, more masterpieces.

Learn to be awake. Know what it is to be aware, to pay attention. So much fog of obscurantism is enshrouding us, masquerading as reality, or even as truth. Reality resides inside us. It is that which is within us that concern us more seriously. The kingdom of heaven is within us, not out there in the skies.The spirit-mind must reverberate, the intellect-instinct bring about ramifications in our attitudes to reality. Briefly put, the artist makes us question the values in life we hold most sacred. To him, art exists as the best alternative to life. It does not vanish when you explore the various stages of its machinery, with nothing to fear. You set up art as alternative to reality because art never contradicts it.

You cannot reduce art to its barest essentials without damaging it by close analyses.To him, it is a “let’s pretend” game that the artist does not mistake for reality to which he directs his sincerest energy plus efforts.

Art to the artist is much a natural and biological activity as growing new cells in the body, much a part of the living reality of life itself. His imagination creating for him an extension of life itself.

The artist lives by his own peculiar brand of faith, not by religion or religiousness. Religion, which ever way you view it, is opposed to artistic reason. Art is not opposed to reason. This is what the artist (always) plumps for in his paintings. Art in itself is religiosity, religiousness, religion.

Life is not the reality surrounding us; it’s only the fragmented truth of reality. The artist picks up the pieces and makes them whole. The best art is only half the truth; the other half is inside him.

If we have poor vision, the artist’s beacon might be too strong for us. In the dimming constellation of our constricting constellation, the artist is a prickly star. He will sting us awake no end. For as long as he is lighted up, he’ll assassinate us all for all our conventional beliefs we clasp most loving, most dear, most sacred to our beating bourgeois breasts!

The artist doesn’t create for fame or money; although temptations will try to seduce him all the time. He creates art for his sake — his continuing creation of art along with the Creator’s creations. For so much beauty continually overwhelms.

Art is no joke. So choose when you do art. For “ART or MONET” (pun intended, irony and paradox offered the artist in a silver platter)!

If you have The Art you take on reckless risks; and maybe, just maybe, only maybe, fame and money will beat a path to your studio.

The unbounded risks of material glory might overwhelm you yet!