Portrait of the Artist

The new year starts with a portrait of the artist, staring into a mirror.  In his 1992 book, The Culture of Complaint, the art critic and curmudgeon Robert Hughes, now deceased, wrote that "...there are too many artists for the base to support.  There are probably 200,000 artists in America, and assuming that each one of them makes forty works a year that yields eight million objects, most of which don't have a ghost of a chance of survival." I've read that there may now be up to two million artists in America.  Being an artist today is surely a quixotic pursuit.  One can't really do it for fame and fortune.  On the other hand, to say that the most important aspect of making art is the experience is suspect, but it may be the only thing we can fall back on.  And if we dream of making art that has value for ourselves and others, the 'experience' is what will guide that dream.