Why do artists make art?

In putting out a Call for Entries, curators at The Lab in San Francisco state, "The situation of the artist in America is not one in which the public is hostile to contemporary art, so much as it is unengaged with it. The emerging artist is thrown back on her own devices-- 'Why do I do this? For my peers, for those who care about art, or for myself?' What can we ascertain about why artists make work for themselves? One answer might be that artists have a yearning to see what it would look like, referring to odd visual juxtapositions, social engagements, cultural interrogations, new ways of seeing familiar things, political intrusions, or formal innovations."

Recently, I attended a presentation by Shirley Watts, San Francisco garden designer and builder. She stated something to the effect of, "We are impacted by beauty and compelled to capture it." I might add compelled to record and reproduce it. And not just beauty. As The Lab curators suggest, artists are occupied with many issues outside of beauty.

Just idle thoughts . . .