Dang Ole Artist
I never, not once, raised my hand in class to say, "When I grow up, I'm going to be an artist."
Instead, growing up I was led to believe the hardest part of work was finding the right folks to work for, the best mission or dream to commit oneself to. It wasn't until I was ordered—and paid handsomely—to sit home and not go to work for other people that I found the ambition and confidence to pursue creating simply for my own sake.
I bristled the first time I overheard folks discussing my work as "Abstract Art." But that's exactly what it is. Each effort was to create in the world that which was otherwise only known to my imagination.
At its heart, my artistic inspiration is a desire to make real that which I could only dream of as a child. I rarely got very close, but the goal was to create an object so fancy, that despite having zero utility in the world, it would still beheld with wonder by another.
The first things I made—things that I believed were art once done—weren't Dang Ole Dangleballs. I discovered within myself a passion in the pursuit of perfection. Hyper-intricate models, which required almost unrealistic outpourings of fine-tuned care, near impossible attention to all-but-invisible detail… completing those well enough to garner praise from their inventors awoke a sense of potential efficacy within me.
Basically, ever since, when I see truly difficult challenges, I don't see an opportunity for defeat. When I find things that can be done but never perfectly, the task becomes an opportunity to really try my hand at something just to see what I can do.
Potential is hypothetical; the way one can invoke passion in their practice seems a more practical measure of what's coming.
I think, for me, art is determined by how hard one fights with no expectation of winning. Sometimes, the stuff people make meets a need of the world, and so they should keep making it. Other times, the things people make meet a need only of their own. I tend to think most art is borne of the latter.