Why MUST I make art?

Wassily Kandinsky "Succession" 

Lisa Aksen "Mannequins Who Love Kandinsky Too Much"

Recently I was asked the question: Why MUST I make art?

This is one of those questions I come back to over and over again.  

To follow is a fast fifteen minute answer to a question that could be pondered daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. It might be interesting to see what the response to this question would be if pondered every week for a year. 

Here is today’s response Wednesday, October 12, 2016.

It's part of my raison-d'être. My reason for being. 

I've been making art my entire life. It's something I do and consider to be part of my DNA. 

It's one part meditation, one part therapy, one part self-expression, one part healing, one part balancing, one part freeing. It's my way of connecting to a part of myself (the artist | creative part) that says: everything is all right. This is what you are here to do and is the one thing you have complete control over. Except for the abstract painting process. Those paintings feel like I am a vessel for some other higher power that is funneling though me. As if my body and breath are being used by this other force to move pigment over surfaces and it decides when the work is finished, not me. 

But, any other creative output... the tightly rendered drawings, paintings, plastic crocheted works, the photographs are all under my control. 

Is that the ego speaking? 

I do have some inert talent.

I occasionally feel joy and inner happiness when in the state of making/creating. 

It's how I contribute to society, as part of the social discourse, to culture and art in this time, this present moment, no matter how many people see it.

The final product is an element of beauty, a creative inspiration (1% inspiration, 99% perspiration),  completed  to hang on someones wall. It is a story, an abstraction, an illustration that brings a bit of delight to the spirit in an otherwise difficult struggle to live and survive each day.

It's my way to keep sane. For when creating, I am fine, focused, working on what I was put here to do. When making art, I'm in the state of gratitude, grace and the glass is half full. My spirit is lit up, content and delighted to be drawing lines, mixing paints, and composing a work of art. To create something from nothing. To delight in creating something new that didn't exist before I brought it forth. 

It's my "gig".