Years ago, my wife wrote an article about Morris Dancing. The last line of the article was, “Why do we dance? Because we have to.” I know why and how I write (because I have to, obviously) and I began to wonder how of much creative work is simply a product of compulsion.
To that end I asked artists on every social network I could think of to please answer the question, “Why do you draw/create art?”
Here are the answers I received:
Niki Smith: I draw to see things. You know a lot about someone when you draw their posture. andre paploo: I draw because I have stories to tell, and like the challenge of sequential art narratives. It can be a really personal form of expression. Nakamura Ching: We all have the same reason. We’re working for our life. I’m a Mangaka, therefore I draw. For my life. Manga is for all readers, my business is for me. ATborderless – Because I can’t help it. I feel I’m giving a concrete shape to something that can be a classic manga when I draw. Rivkah: I draw because the words demand pictures. To deny them art would be to make a story half complete. To refuse the story is to refuse myself. Sirk Tani: Images always swim in my mind. I draw to let them out of my head. Makes me happy, and relieved, having freed thinking-space for new images to take form. Att: Because drawing ensures immortality for the subject and the artist. The Sooz : I don’t really know; it is something I have done literally since I was able to. I get ideas, and then I need to put them on paper. missionYCO: I create art because I want to share my visions with everyone in a visual manner. My worlds, my characters, my scenarios. Angel Lozada: I know nothing more natural to me than to draw. It allows me to dream in a more tangible way. It is my first love. It makes me who I am. sirkrozz: I draw because i wanted drawing to be my job. I draw because i learnt, not because i was born to do it. In suma, i draw because i can. eddiecurrent: To get the mad, awful, wonderful ideas out of my head… so I can get some sleep. The whispers, Erica. The whispers. onezumi: Because art saved my life and it’s my responsibility to keep the cycle going and help others PL: I like looking for things that go together…and things that don’t. WildaManba: it’s who I am. I create what I feel and wish was, and to give others who feel the same something to relate to and not feel alone. jlgehron: I create to see what I want to see, to fill a lack of something. Have fun with things. But also to affect someone some way. Museless_Fool: I create because it’s the most perfect and natural way for me to get my own thoughts across. buckima: Stress relief by wreaking havoc in an alternate universe under my complete control. Mwahahahahah! Frankie B Washington: I draw because I’m an artist. Tim Perkins: I love to create new worlds, characters and mythologies for readers of all ages. It’s a privilege to do so and a dream since I was a child, upon seeing Jack Kirby’s work. Janet Hetherington: I draw for the same reason I write: to share personal vision through storytelling. People react immediately to art. It takes longer to digest written work. deady_83: i draw to make people feel happy…it is the only reason for me nowadays. Asutoraeanooka: The ability to create something extraordinary is a gift I enjoy sharing with others. If art can inspire and motivate, it’s golden. Sachikosama: because it makes me happy. I feel so relaxed when I’m creating. The only time I’m at more peace is when I’m cooking. Mizuki Monika – I had many fears as a child. About life and sex and what it meant to live. By drawing those themes I was able to conquer my fears. Where there is life, there is hope. Sergio Aviles: I draw because there are characters with stories that live in my head and they need to escape. Artist_ARThomas: I make art to express and to inspire. I have a vision I must convey in order to function, a vision that can live on when I’m gone. AHGreenwood: Drawing is not so much putting pencil to paper as it is process of extracting infectious material (aka stories) from my head. Kitao Taki: I draw manga for me. I draw what I want to read – stories of women who love women. Jason Thompson: I draw to recreate the world the way I see it, like a filter, but mostly to tell stories. I have no interest in non-narrative forms of art. wooldridgeart: I paint to create a tangible nonexistent reality which one can stare without the feeling of intrusion! Lea Hernandez – Drawing is insight, transformation, prayer, meditation, a tonic for depression, a way to make myself laugh & a snark safety valve.
Today’s article is *my* art project – a portrait of compulsion in 140 words or less.
This is a painful lesson in my own ignorance; I think the only creator I know here is Jason Thompson.
I think my favorite is Frankie B. Washington’s: “I draw because I”m an artist.” I have a weak spot for tautologies….
Over the years my motivations as an artist have varied. I drew to impress people; to express myself; to get “rich,” or because I had to or felt obligated to.
I see creation as a need by mankind. It must come out in one form or another. Mine is cooking.
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I agree, judi. I think that once the basics of food, shelter and protection are gained, human minds naturally turn toward art and community as the next most important needs.
I’m a little hesitant to make art a universal need…in part because it means fairly different things in different contexts, I think (moreso than food and shelter, anyway.) A medieval monk would have had a fairly different idea about what he was doing and why than a graphic advertising designer, and both would have different ideas again from a mangaka….
That’s exactly why I would call it universal, Noah – and it’s the point (if there is a point) of my article. That for some of us, regardless of form, there is a drive to create that overshadows everything else.
Yeah…but the monk wouldn’t say it was a drive to create. He’d say it was a duty to honor God, or some such (I presume.) I think the form, or the historicized experience, influences the content of the experience in ways that matter.
It makes sense that you’d get a fairly coherent version of why people create by asking folks from a relatively circumscribed group (circumscribed by time period, if nothing else.) It just seems difficult to generalize universally from there. (Which isn’t to say that the project isn’t interesting in its own right, of course!)
Very interesting project, indeed!
It’s a shame we don’t have an equivalent project for the monks, and at 10 year intervals or so, throughout history — sort of the artists’ census.
That’ll be the first thing I do when I get the damn time machine working….
Maybe monks are a different set, but I bet you could go to any time or place and find plenty of secular craftsmen and artists who would say they create “because they have to.”
It’s hard to say without the time machine obviously! I just think art at the moment has been kind of cut off from its social/religious/etc. functions in a lot of ways, and tied onto new, less clearly visible posts. That creates a situation where people say, “I create because I have to,” rather than, “I create to glorify God,” or “I create for this particular social function.” The sense that it’s universal rather than particular seems historical to me (though I could be wrong. My knowledge of the comparative position of art throughout time is fairly shaky.)
I really enjoyed this essay. For myself, I often draw or create in order to relax. My hands need something to do. Sometimes it’s drawing, sometimes it’s gardening, sometimes it’s knitting.
I see what Noah’s getting at, here, and I think I agree with him. I would argue that maybe 500 years ago, you would get very few responses like the ones posted. Maybe genius artists like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, etc. would say they “have to” create, but I think the large majority of craftspeople would attribute their creation to some other outside force (e.g. God, economics, whatever) rather than an internal force. As I recall, the focus on the internal subject and its individual desires is a relatively new concept, coming out circa 18th century via humanism.
I think that nowadays, we, as humans, are much more attuned to our own individual desires and ideas about self-fulfillment so we are much more likely to say things like “I feel empty if I don’t make art.”
I see what you guys are saying, but I really don’t buy that Durer or DaVinci (not to mention the craftsmen all over the world not associated with a potentate or organized religion didn’t create because they had a drive to that came from within.
I just don’t buy that art is modern and we’re the only ones who do it…because. You had to spin and sew as a woman…you didn’t have to sew well and make all sorts of exciting decorations. You had to bead…you didn’t *have* to incorporate unique visions in your work. You have to cut wood to make a desk, you don’t *have* to create joints and tenons that last for hundreds of years are aesthetically pleasing as well as functional.
I don’t think that they’re saying it didn’t come from “a drive within” so much as that the idea of an interior drive is a modern concept. They might have felt the same way, but understood the feeling differently. I mean “a drive within” is vague enough to basically just mean “motivation.” But what form does that drive take? How do people understand it? Where does it come from?
Surely for at least some of the craftspeople it was the satisfaction of a job well done, at least in the cases where the person is well-executing someone else’s design using a learned technique. That wouldn’t necessarily account for the imaginative elements you mention, although some of those extra-imaginative creations may also have been showing off skill. I think about the Waterford crystal master craftsmen and those extraordinary bowls: maybe they say they are driven from within to craft them, but I can imagine a time when people did it for prestige and bragging rights. Art accrued professional prestige in pre-modern times — really right up to the Industrial Revolution — more broadly, in a way that it doesn’t today in our disposable society.
It doesn’t seem weird to me that if you think of the reasons people made art in, say, 16th century England, there were likely some people seeking prestige, and some people motivated by a “drive within” that they described variously in terms like caring for their family or being moved by God or even competing within a professional guild or social group, and I’m sure there were other ones I haven’t thought of…
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