On some occasions I have stopped to think about the stimulation the artist needs to create. Much has been written about this; there have been analysis done from all the possible perspectives, both in the period some lived and in the way in which these lived, and it was even believed that all the artists, in order to be able to express themselves with liberty, they had to be bohemian and live in a different way to how their fellow human beings lived; they had to be a rare specie within the human specie, and they some times even marginalized themselves in order to be more artists. I say that nature is very complex and a schizophrenic person, for example, not because he is a schizophrenic he is an artist, but if an artist is schizophrenic, it is something inherent to him, and it is even possible that some of his attacks may stimulate him with a force that maybe, in his lucid moments, he would not possess. Whatever he may paint under this influence, he carries it out because he is an artist and not because he is schizophrenic. The belief that the real creation is linked to the hardships the artist may suffer, either calamities due to some illness or economic hardships, is totally false. This stimulus stemming from the need has an influence in you but at the same time it is taking part of that total freedom from you; physical and psychical freedom… and maybe these needs that might even have plundered creation as a shelter at certain times, they are limiting you at the same time because of the desire to survive, the desire to eat, to be able to rest comfortably, of not being cold… remain in the subconscious.

At that moment, the artist can take refuge in his art and create with fury, but the work will be a good one if the artist is good, and if on the contrary the artist is mediocre, whether he starves or not, the work will be mediocre. There is one thing that it is clear to me: the artist is born, and then, he has to know he is an artist, and then he has to learn from nature and from everything and everyone that may teach him something in that journey that has a departure but that never ends; the journey that leads you to the infinite. Coming back to the stimulus that may influence art and the creator, there is a supreme one: love; the force of love is immense, not to say infinite; it is so strong that makes the artist to make beauty even out of tragedy, because he lives it with love, though with helplessness too. Love is a feeling that comes from the deepest inside of the human being, from that inside from where pure art must emerge. Art itself. Art for art. That is why the success of the painter, the poet, the writer, the sculptor, the musician, lies in painting, writing, sculpting, composing; it is in that moment of creation without obstacles, looking only at the past out of the corner or his eyes, without thinking in the future; it is then when he has succeeded as an artist.

Once the work is finished and that the creator himself can take a look at it, he has his reward and his success; without entering into considerations of if the work is good or not, without making comparisons, something to which all humans we are so inclined.

How is it possible to compare a work by Velazquez with one by Mozart? Or comparing Goya with Picasso? Each artist has a beginning and end, his own beginning and end, and nobody from outside can analyze something that is born from the inside, not even the creator of the work. Because when he finishes the work and he presents it, it is no longer his, it becomes an entity with its own life that the artist has created so that it does not belong to him anymore; just like when the mother gives birth to her child, giving birth to an independent being, with life and proper feelings that the child will develop in his or her environment and he or she will constantly create his or her own personality.

Love, soul and personality… three sublime words that can be applied not only to human beings but also to the work of those human beings.

Love is essential to live; without love life has no meaning. We posses our soul for all the eternity, and lastly, personality is what differentiates us from the rest of human beings with whom we live, we unite, love and also disregard.

The work of art is like life itself; it has to be carried out with love, it has to have a soul and lastly, it has to have its own personality, it has to be presented before its audience in its purity in order to establish that necessary communion between the work and the one that wants to contemplate it; and that communion will only be established if the viewer is ready for that.

When I go to visit exhibitions or museums, sometimes “my heart sinks” when I see so much people looking at a painting as if they were observing the butcher of the neighbourhood weighing a pound of ribs or as if they were staring at the traffic-light when it is red. Green, orange, red: three colours of a traffic-light that are stared at as the sign to cross the street. That is the feeling I get from many art exhibitions visitors… they go on from one painting to another and they have only seen the colours of the traffic-light.

Jorge Rando, Malaga, January 2006 (Epiphany)