Living as an Artist

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual—become clairvoyant.… We reach then into reality.… Such are the moments of our greatest happiness.… Such are the moments of our greatest vision. At such times, there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it.… We would continue to hear it.… But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their song.… Intellectuality steps in, and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect.… It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace—and we fall back and become our ordinary selves.… Yet we live in the memory of these songs, which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us.… They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.
I think the real artists are too busy with just being and growing and acting (on canvas or however) like themselves to worry about the end. The end will be what it will be. The object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation.

Robert Henri, from The Art Spirit