How Important Are the Arts?

I got that question this morning during a live interview at a gallery opening in Denmark. It was an honor to be part of the opening exhibition even though we are in different countries and different time zones.

How important are the arts? this reminds me of my father's comments as I pleaded with my parents to go to art school. He said. "What good is art? You can't eat it or wear it?

My answer to the question today was something like, "Without art, life is colorless"

Here are some other artists' quotes; "Art is art. Everything else is everything else." Ad Reinhardt

"Art is lies that tell the truth." Picasso

Perhaps my favorite quote, at least for today;   "A great artist...must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy." Goethe

I am sure not only artists feel the divine discontent. It is what we do with that discontent, isn't it?

I was discontented with this painting several years ago and I destroyed it. The image popped up on  a post from Pinterest. Someone had saved it. I thought, "Wow, that was a good painting. Why did I not let it live?"

encaustic. I may try to re-create it.