This is SUCH a great post - so thought-provoking and considered. I loved your '4 reasons' and it's really interesting to me that my own artistic activities encompass each of them pretty much equally!

What do you think art is?

I experience human art as the co-creative process of a discrete, individual expression of Life, working together with All That Is - channelling, through their own particular filter, the Life that informs them. One might say that art is the visceral, embodied expression of Life exploring Itself, in the case of humanity by way of exploring and attempting to express and address the experience of being human. It's also my considered opinion that Nature is The Greatest Artist in the existence, matter creating new ideas, new patterns, new individuals, inspired and compelled by the great, unknowable, unfathomable Mystery.

What role do you see art playing in our world?

I'd like to think that art can help to save us as a species from ourselves - art, combined with love (and especially a love of nature). It is one of the great antidotes to the sickness under which the masses currently labour. Ultimately, in a world which did not labour under the restrictions placed upon it by the 'ruling elite', all of us would be absolutely free to express ourselves creatively, without fear of repercussion. I feel that art pushes us individually and collectively, towards this realisation. The realisation of our own enslavement and the way to free ourselves from it. All art carries this message, if we listen carefully enough. Being creative is a subversive act. It bucks against everything the control system would force upon the individual. When expressed without restraint, art sets the imagination, the heart, the soul of the participant free, even if it's only for the duration of the artistic endeavour.

What do you think makes a piece of art GREAT?

For me, GREAT art is the art of BEING ONESELF, the individual that one truly is, beyond and before the indoctrination we are subjected to by culture. the truly great artists for me are those who give society and its mores the middle finger, and sing their own unique song with all of their heart. Being brave enough to do that is actually an Art all of its own. Great art casts aside that which is divisive in favour of that which unites. Great art has an unmistakably life-serving resonance. Great art reaches into the heart and says, "THIS, you will hear, and feel, and see!", does it not?

With love,

Jay xxx