A while ago, I was reading a book that a neighbor of my daughter’s thought I’d enjoy– Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle Laporte.

It’s what I’d characterize as a cheerleader, self help, get yourself grounded and growing book. Then I came to a section where Laport says You’re an artist and that’s that!

This is how she starts out: “Art-making is not strictly about visual creations and producing material things. Every single one of us is an artist at something.  We lost ourselves in the creation of it, we’re gifted at making it, we feel closer to ourselves and to a

I’m asking this question, in the headline, because I really want to know.

As an artist, what have you understood over the years about your relationship to your art?

Has there been a story line weaving its way through your art career? Or have you noticed seasons of relationships with your art? A winter mode, perhaps. Or summer solstice festivities?

Does your relationship with your art, in any way, mirror your other significant relationships?

Are there highs and lows… and what’s your style of dealing with either?

Would you say there’s passion or have you slipped into

This week we held the 63^rd conversation for my bi-monthly Blue Stocking Art Salon’s via the smARTist conference line.

Besides my lovely host, and even lovelier artist, Lori Wolfson, we were joined by 7 other artists—all curious to find out more from themselves, and each other, what it means to have a relationship with the art they make.

At first blush, the idea of “having a relationship” with your art may seem like a non-starter. Of course we have a relationship with whatever we do, so what’s the big deal?

My thought was that, for many artists, their relationship has been ongoing long enough that it is taken for granted, hardly given a second thought much less a second glance.

But since that relationship to your art is the entire foundation for your art career, I decided it was time to 

Last Sunday, I talked about why fulfilling a career in the visual arts is the Mt. Olympus climb that it seems to be, and why I feel so passionate about artists bringing their visions into the ever-expanding light of human consciousness.

Which, of course, brings up the question about what holds artists back from bringing their visions into the ever-expanding light of human consciousness.

I know from experience how easy, and almost automatic, it is to focus on what seems to be …