Artists often have something of a God complex: they see themselves as the original source of art, the very reason and purpose behind its existence. As though without the artist, their vision, and their intentions, art simply wouldn't exist.
But sometimes I think it's far more honest to be a craftsman who follows trends. In that case, you simply treat art as a profitable way to make a living. You have skills, there's a demand for them, and people pay you for what you do.
An artist searching for deeper meaning, however, lays claim to something much greater. They seem to believe that the world before their work comes into existence and the world after it are fundamentally different places. That whatever they bring into the world must somehow change it.
And this ambition is both inspiring and an enormous burden.
After all, we don't even know whether the world wants to change. Does it need these changes? Did it ever ask for them?
And when the world rejects the artist and the work that was supposed to change something, the artist feels wounded. They withdraw into themselves, look at what they've created, and wonder:
"I brought you into this world. So why hasn't anything changed?"
But something has changed.
You have.
While working on that piece, you developed new thoughts. You learned to do something better, more precisely, with greater mastery. You took something that had existed only in your mind and gave it form.
Perhaps the only true purpose of art is precisely this: to change one particular person.
The person who creates it.
And if the work happens to change other people as well, perhaps that is merely art's reflected power. Not its primary force, but a secondary one.
Perhaps all this time, while you thought you were creating your work, your work was creating you.
(Digital drawing, 2026)