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One might argue that because of the prevalence of the camera and its overuse - because every day throughout the world millions of images are made by millions of people - the ability to produce a memorable image usina camera is a far greater achievement than to do so using paints, brushes and a canvas where competitors are fewer. However, I do sometimes wish that I could paint badly as there appears to be money in it. That both Hitler and Churchill could paint a little gives some indication of the dangers of weekend artists.

Craft, it is said, is the visible edge of art and should you find yourself in the presence of work in which it is difficult to discern any craft then you will probably find that it is equally hard to discover its art. The overwhelming desire of the technological age for immediate gratification has led many who claim to be - and who are, unfortunately, acclaimed as being - artists, to eschew the disciplines of hard-earned craft skills. This indiscipline in the arts has allowed the sciences and their attendant 'facts' to gain the

intellectual ascendancy which formerly belonged to men and women of imagination. Science offers knowledge without understanding. Art offers to those who seek it, a wisdom that extends far beyond the limits of mere empirical fact.The power of art resides in that unclear reactor which is at the core of us all and whatever he may tell you to the contrary an artist is ultimately a spectator of self because there is no subject more revealing.

Perhaps God bestows the gift of art upon those who cannot reach Him using the more conventional paths as making art is the closest one can get to Paradise without actually having to be good. The only way to make art is to ignore the possibility of profit and those who attempt to make it with an eye to financial gain rarely achieve the compromise.

As for myself, I would rather live in a one room hovel on the outskirts of Paradise than a luxury apartment in downtown Hell