sue clancy – artist

I write today in support of my fellow local artists and all artists everywhere. You are more important and more necessary now than ever. And it doesn’t matter that you’re not famous – what matters is that you are creating something. Art relates to our humanity like water relates to the thirsty body.

I write today because yesterday I had someone in my social media gloating about the election saying, and I’m paraphrasing and writing less angrily than they did, but the gist of what was said was “since the liberals were now officially owned and unpopular that means all the liberal artists – especially gay ones – should stop trying to indoctrinate everyone with their crap”.

Well, I blocked and deleted their comments and went on with my life. But then I thought that if I’m getting such messages it’s likely that other artists are getting similar.

So I write today to say “keep making your art”. Artists as people may have personal qualities, politics and opinions of all sorts *but the Arts themselves are about our humanity*. That’s a much larger concept than any political moment.

The Arts demonstrate, via paintings, fabric patterns, stories, music, etc. the billions of ways there are to be humane humans. The effort to try to make, with your own hands and heart, anything at all connects you to your own humanity – even if you never show anyone that thing you made.

Even if you don’t try to make anything yourself- you benefit from the Arts: perhaps you watch movies, listen to music, buy clothes or cups with patterns on them. Hardly any one of us can go 10 minutes in a day without encountering the Arts even accidentally. For example the restaurant where you have lunch will have, besides the culinary arts, paintings or murals, sculptures, background music, fabric patterns… the whole restaurant environment will be a carefully created one.

If you’re an artist or creative – please keep going, keep creating! If you don’t consider yourself artistic, please, comment kindly, or don’t comment at all, whenever you see creativity from an artist. And if you can afford it please buy from local artists and local art galleries and local bookstores and local independent theaters and local restaurants…. we need you and you need us because we’re all part of humanity. (See also the quote below by Toni Morrison)

Yesterday I bought a big package of paper plates that I’ll use as painting palettes. There are more than 200 plates in this package. I plan to keep going.