In response to a letter from P...

Since this is my first time writing for the new year, Happy 2010!
Can't say I've made any major resolutions, but I sure wouldn't mind dropping a few pounds (like everyone else in the new world).

A friend wrote to tell me that although she really loved my work, seeing it along with some other artists (she mentioned two others by name) had caused her to give up making art. This bothers me a lot. Ideally, I'd always be the artist that inspires others to get out there and make things. Someone who set loose a flurry of energy culminating in people doing.
Guess this can't always be so. As much as I feel it a blessing to inspire people (and, apparently, one that I have little control over), the opposite effect is also possible.
I'd urge anyone feeling this way-someone who stops making art because it seems as though others (pardon the metaphor) seem to have all the aces -to question the whys of
their actions. I'm not saying that each and every one of us is meant to make art, far from it-but that those who enjoy creating should be very careful of measuring themselves against others. After all, if it's imitation that you feel you are pursuing, look at all of us who make things-we each have heroes we look up to...and many of us copy. Although we choose to put these heroes on a stratospherically high pedestal, we can't forget that they are only influences, rather than contestants we are running a race with.
Look at the folk artists as a good example to follow-these folks made art in a vacuum, with no one to look up to, with no one to offer a measuring stick. The art prevailed -without the use of comparison and probably, to a great degree, without much comment or approval from standers-by. I love that Bill Traylor just started working one day, quite late in his life. The reason he had-just to make things.
The lesson : Don't sell your creative drive short-let your hands tell you what is meant to be done and not the work of others.