The artist's connection: receiving inspiration and guidance.

This is another Alex Grey painting. It's called "Painting", and it's showing us the muses, spiritual inspirations and divine guidance that the artist is receiving. He is, essentially, a conduit for the creative force, rather than an ego driven mechanism that's disconnected from anything else. Grey's paintings aren't everyone's cup of tea. They are mine, however. Understanding the connection that we need with something greater than ourselves in order to be creative has been a true epiphany for me.

I was thinking about Art competitions earlier, and it struck me as rather bizarre that they exist. I mean, how can art be something that can be competed over? Isn't it purely a subjective thing? One imagines a panel of judges looking at Matisse's work and spotting the irregularities and faults, or judging a Picasso by its brushwork. Is it just that we have critics so that people will know what they like? Are the majority of people so disconnected from their feelings that they require a third party to tell them whether something is enjoyable, thought provoking, or whatever? What criteria do they go by?

I've always had a problem with the importance of other people's opinions. I mean, who is someone else to tell me that what I know, what I understand, or what I can do or feel is at an acceptable standard? As I child I wrestled with the whole business of academia, simply because it requires the suspension of one's own intrinsic motivation towards education. I could never be bothered to learn something simply so I could get through exams, and prove to others that I was capable of learning anything.

That's why I've described myself as an auto didact. I really do feel that too many people place way too much importance on academic qualifications. The cost, however, is that in the society we live in, most people do exactly that, and the truly free thinkers aren't generally valued. That's been my sense, and my experience. Maybe things are changing now for me. I suppose one "pays ones dues" however one goes about things; whether one "toes the line", or however one goes about things. One wonders how many brilliant artists never were, simply because they never went to art school, simply because one individual, but powerful critic felt their work was of no importance.

There were a lot of "ones" in that last paragraph, weren't there?

But the arts do require freedom of spirit, I believe. As Julia Cameron says in The Artist's Way, academia can stifle the creative impulse, as it has a tendency to pull things apart rather than build them. That's essentially the nature of the critic: he's a destroyer, rather than a nurturer, much of the time. The beauty of an understanding of spirit is that the spirit is the wellspring of creativity. It's the source. Perhaps that's why some people have a problem with it: it requires the suspension of ego, and the understanding that one's own abilities are, actually, God given blessings.