The mind is a jet

There’s no real difference between making beautiful art and making art that’s ugly. In practice, that is. Likewise, if you can be nice to people then you can probably also find some way of insulting them. One reaches a point in life where one makes conscious decisions about how one wishes to be perceived.

It takes a particular personality, as an artist, to get into overdrive and to create with your back against the wall. It takes a particular personality to say, “I was forced to offend my audience.” But can one actually say, “I was forced to entertain my audience.” Yes, one can.

The reason why, is because people pay good money to be entertained; certainly more than they pay to have their sensibilities injured. And who doesn’t need good money? So, one is not forced, but gently coerced into making art in a particular way. And it is down to the artist, as a gifted and ethical creator, to work for more than just compensation.

There are many other motivations. Creating things makes me feel like a boy with a Meccano set, who wants to build bridges with the same pieces that can build airplanes or cars. The same could be said of my old Scalextric set. It went in a figure 8, but I wanted to make it into a straight road over mountains, and through cities.

Making pictures is really expressing a desire to travel. For me, the mind is a jet and the paint brushes are the wings that help it fly.