Why you make art?

Have you thought lately about why you make art?  What you’re in it for?  Here’s another quote I like a lot from Olivia Laing’s book, The Lonely City.

People make things – make art or things that are akin to art – as a way of expressing their need to for contact, or their fear of it; people make objects as a way of coming to terms with shame, with grief. People make objects to strip themselves down, to survey their scars, and people make objects to resist oppression, to create a space in which they can move freely . . .

She goes on to explain that while art doesn’t have to be reparative, just like it doesn’t have to be beautiful, it very often is.  I like the quote because it’s gritty.  There’s an urgency to it that in-it-for-the-long-haul artists can lose touch with.