Art as we know it has always been about business. The purists think this is wrong. That art should not be concerned with this. I agree with the principle of this sentiment, to a point. There is a certain ring of truth about it that feels right.

But the purists like to create dogmas that tend to forget reality. Some consider artists, like me, who have managed to earn a living by marketing art to others, to be beneath their self-proclaimed standards of what a true artist should be. They forget to realize that artists have lived from time immemorial from the fat of the land.

Let's face it; a painting or a sculpture, for example, has no practical value. It cannot feed you or shelter you. Therefore, the artist depends on others to support them so that they can make art. The artist has to secure ways to get that support, and in my book, however he gets the support he needs, is valid.

Unfortunately, for those "intellectuals" who make distinctions, to be "commercial" is a filthy way to earn that support. But I tell you, if I were able to take away the art grants, the fellowships and the museum gifts, most of those voices will be silenced. They will cease to exist. Survival of the fittest would rule. Supply and demand would rule.

Artists and art intellectuals who think that they work in a vacuum neglect to acknowledge that without an audience, a market, without the sponsors and the buyers, there are no artists. Without these they will die. We all need each other.

The artist always hopes, secretly perhaps, that there is a discriminating and perceptive public which will admire his or her work. The public needs the artist to remind him that in a world of tangibles, art offers them something they desperately need: spiritual values. It may not be a perfect system and it is subject to abuse, but in the end, the market, the buying public, has the last word.