welcome to art for all the sketchbook skool podcast. I'm your host, Danny Gregory. I'm the author of a dozen or so books on art and creativity. And I'm a sketchbook artist. And today I'd like to talk about artists about how we see them and what that means to us as a society and to us as individual makers. If we buy a graphical movie about an artist depicted subject as some sort of dysfunctional weirdo Picasso, a woman heater, and go, uh, psychotic, suicidal Basquiat, uh, drug addicted suicide. Polica a drunken suicidal. Warhol a weirdo and a con man in a wig Michelangelo had disagreeable obsessive free to Kalo, a victim of love and disability, and to lose the track horny dwarf, Mozart, a child Beethoven, a deaf crank. Their genius is a curse fed only by their tortured souls. In America. We love athletes. We love pop stars, but we love to hate artists. When Rebecca 10 we're taught that being an artist is impractical. Childish. And self-indulgent that talent is a God-given gift either. Have you shouldn't bother them? Artists are arrogant, disconnected, elitist, millionaires, or poor paupers. This myth is white parents accept all the cuts in art and music education. And yet they'll do anything to promote athletics in schools. No one would want their kid to want to grow up to be an artist. It would seem it wasn't always this way. Doing watercolors used to be a standard part of a decent education. So did reading and writing poetry, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach. They were all government employees. In 21st century, America, that critic in your head has the support and encouragement of the whole gang, your parents, your teachers, your neighbors, bosses, and role models, even so called creative people in the media. Keep promoting this illusion, that being creative as either a fool's game or it's the lottery. It's a small wonder that it's so hard to drown out this voice. It says don't sing. Unless you're going to become a pop star. Don't paint, unless you know, you'll be a genius who's recognized in your own lifetime. And if you have to practice it something, work on your pitch, your swing, your kick skills. That'll pave the way for your future. You're fighting enough obstacles as it is. Don't let your own brain join the conspiracy, tell it to shut the hell up and let you get back to work because all those voices, so write about how to build profit are flat, wrong about how to build a decent life without art. Your soul suffers. You lack a chance to express who you are to whom your own point of view to make your life your own. You're less than human. No matter how many Superbowl rings you're wearing. When you do make something and you share it with a world, your voice will be proven wrong again. People won't see. Well, that drawing is pathetic. That poem is lame. That note was slightly flat. That diary reveals one a more on the writer. One, if they stopped the judges at all, he'll almost certainly say, I wish I did that, which will give you the chance to say, well, why don't you. Thanks for joining me today. I'll create something new for you. Again next week until then I'm Danny Gregory and this is hard for him.