“If it comes to that, I wont be an artist.”
“You’ll always be an artist, you have no choice.”
This exchange from the 1965 movie “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” takes place between two great artists of the Italian Renaissance, Raphael and Michelangelo, as they discuss the sacrifices (the agony) that artists must endure in order to do what they “must do or die” (the ecstasy.)
The gift of artistic ability, in all its many expressions, is a gift from God. We can deny our gifts, ignore them, try to forget about them and move on to other endeavors. But they will always call to us because they are part of who we are and how we are made.
It does not, in the end, matter if our work brings us wealth or fame. If, as is more likely, we struggle all our lives trying to “make it” as an artist, if we never make a dime from our work, we will still employ our gifts because we “have no choice.” God has given all of us gifts to reach out to our brothers and sisters, to show them His glory, and bring them back to Him. We must make use of the gifts God has given us or die a spiritual death.
In that respect we are all servants of God, using the gifts he has given us to do His will. For the artist, that means coming to the realization that his audience is not other people. His audience is God, His angels, and His saints. We do not serve our brothers and sisters by trying to please them. That is an impossible task. We serve them by showing them God through our work and our lives for the two cannot be separated. The work we produce reflects, and is informed by, our moral and spiritual convictions.
All of us, artists included, must ask ourselves, what does our work say about us and who do we serve?
“If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.” Letter to the Galatians 1:10