My Responsibility as an Artist

What I feel is that I need to give people something that they can grasp onto, that they can understand or comprehend. I think it can be very intimidating for people to go into galleries and see things that they just don’t have any idea of what it is that they’re seeing. That doesn’t touch them and leaves them kind of cold and intimidated.  

I very much want to reach people and I think this is a really intense time in human history to be alive.  And to not address things that are going on in the world today, and kind of do art world, inside art world stuff — art for the art world — that’s not enough anymore.  Just for it to be the novelty item, I think that is over and the time is done.  

People are looking for something.  They’re looking for some nourishment, some sustenance, and they’re looking for art that will touch them and move them and shed some light on what’s happening today and not just be a reflection of the madness and the confusion, but actually give them some insight and some connection with an artist.  

That’s when that magical thing happens, when an artist, whether it be a musician or a dancer, when they connect with a person emotionally through their art, through a picture.  That’s when the pictures, that’s when the piece, whatever it is, whatever the medium, that’s when it’s complete and when you connect with that person.  

And I feel that artists have to try to connect.  They have to try to be very clear in what it is that their purpose is and what it is they’re conveying because otherwise, it’s just more stuff.