my responsibility as an artist

To understand my responsibility as an artist, I need to look no further than my own conscience.  I believe the artist should first ask the question, who am I responsible for? The answer to that question, should then guide he or she in what they create. In my travels around the world, I have met skilled artist’s who’s only means to feed their family, is to paint or be creative in some other form. The question of what they should create is answered in their need, not the extension of a political agenda, or the whimsical pursuit of an ideal from a position of relative abundance. By asking, who am I responsible for? The artist can make a choice grounded in something more meaningful than a contemporary trend.