the act of creating
Though artists generally aren’t aware of it, that end work is a by-product of a greater desire. We aren’t creating to produce or sell material products. The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is
... See moreRick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Artists spent their time to explain as if making sense was important
“The private details of artmaking are utterly uninteresting to audiences,” write Bayles and Orland, “because they’re almost never visible—or even knowable—from examining the finished work.”
Austin Kleon • Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
Art requires access to the imagination, a notoriously difficult place to visit. The imagination fuels an idea. The artist acts urgently, often impulsively, on that idea but brings conscious rigor to the evaluation of what the imagination has spewed. Ultimately, experience, intellect, insight, and drive enable them to shape the work and then to edit
... See moreAdam Moss • The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
By this definition, art is less an object and more a process of exploration.
Amy Whitaker • Art Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules, Budgets, and Bosses
This is why art matters: because it dredges our psychic depths in ways that even the artist may not understand. “The arts,” writes the Zen poet Gary Snyder, following Levi-Strauss, “are the wilderness areas of the imagination, surviving like national parks in the midst of civilized minds.” Strange things grow in the wilderness; unusual plants... See more
Paul Kingsnorth • The Great Work: Alchemy and the Power of Words – Paul Kingsnorth
As art would no longer respond to itself, and no longer had any constraints, other human activities could be drawn from the world into its hungry maw. Art was no longer moving forward. Individual artists were free to consume the present, swallow other cultural forms, and twist them into new experiences.