- 27 Dec, 2025 *
It is the unofficial fiduciary duty of every artist to elevate their craft to a level of excellence—not from the perspective of critics (they don’t matter), but in the eyes of the audience. Even if that audience consists of just two people, including your mother. The duty of every artist is to consume great art, decipher what greatness looks like, and then create work that surpasses even that.
That is the only way a craft can survive, improve, and ensure the audience consistently gets the best end of the deal. Charging money for art is one thing; creating art for money is another. The latter is vulgar. But how does one elevate a craft to…
- 27 Dec, 2025 *
It is the unofficial fiduciary duty of every artist to elevate their craft to a level of excellence—not from the perspective of critics (they don’t matter), but in the eyes of the audience. Even if that audience consists of just two people, including your mother. The duty of every artist is to consume great art, decipher what greatness looks like, and then create work that surpasses even that.
That is the only way a craft can survive, improve, and ensure the audience consistently gets the best end of the deal. Charging money for art is one thing; creating art for money is another. The latter is vulgar. But how does one elevate a craft to the heights of excellence? You need to know your audience. You need to know them well enough to respect their capacity for comprehension without muddying the narrative.
You must deliver sufficient information, wrapped in a cohesive narrative, so the audience can form their own version of the story. When a person stares at a painting, they construct their own story—one that rarely matches the artist’s version. And that is precisely the point. Give the audience enough material to stitch together their own narrative, because that act of assembly makes the art theirs. They feel involved because they have participated in its creation. Once that happens, the art is no longer just yours. It becomes something they will treasure.
A great story always allows the reader to form an opinion before revealing its own interpretation—doing so in a way that still gratifies the audience. This is why characters play such a crucial role. They are the conduits through which the reader enters the story. It is through their experiences that the reader understands the narrative, and through their perspective that the reader connects the dots. Do not lead the reader astray, but do not spoon-feed them either, lest they feel disengaged.
The only way to truly excel at your craft is to involve the audience in it. Once the work is complete, it no longer belongs solely to you. The more people engage with the art, the more narratives form around it; the more personal it becomes to them. If you can elevate your art to a level where it sparks multiple interpretations—each shaped by the audience’s own mental makeup—then you have truly immortalised your craft.