For whom do we create? How important is accessibility?
My friend, Nanci Lee, a poet, recently submitted her work for publication. She was rejected. The judgement was that it was too obscure.
As creators, our produce needs to be seen, heard, or it lies buried in ourselves. Yet the pleasure, excitement, struggle of creating lies within ourselves. To listen to others’ opinions, reactions can be instructive or it can be destructive. The choice is with the creator.
I don’t think James Joyce was concerned with accessibility. He rather thrived on his own language. Obscurity was his necessity. The lines in T.S. Elliot’s poems have been analyzed, taken apart, put back together by many generations. I took a course in university that studied the Four Quartets alone, never feeling redundant in its offering.
For me, the key word is necessity. The work needs to be necessary, honest. I need to do this, make this particular painting. It teaches me about myself, about life, how to be in this world. And as well, I do want it to connect with viewers. The profundity of a work is not how available it is but how deeply it resonates for me and in the world.
We are living in a very complicated time. Not much is straight forward, accessible. Connection is very important. Staying with what is important to me is a necessity.
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