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BURNING NEED. Musicians, writers, painters and other people in the arts feel compelled to create. (Moresby Press image) |
What Motivates People in the Arts? |
Self-expression, natural talent, pleasure, therapy—and yes, fortune and fame—all fuel the creative drive, artists and psychologists say
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IN HIS BOOK A MOVEABLE FEAST, a memoir of Paris in the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway recalls visiting the writer Gertrude Stein:
“Writing every day made her happy, but as I got to know her better I found that for her to keep happy it was necessary that this steady daily output, which varied with her energy, be published and that she receive recognition … and official acceptance.”
People born with the talent to write, sing, dance, play an instrument, draw, act, or make movies seem compelled to create their work. But is it enough for them simply to express themselves, as an act of catharsis? Is their song, book, play or painting an end in itself?
Or for the people who create them, are the arts a means to fulfill a human longing for acceptance, praise, love, sex or money? Creative people might not realize their own motives. But they know they were born to do it.
“A writer doesn’t decide to become one, as somebody else might decide to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or an investment banker—because writing is not a profession,” novelist Philip Caputo says. “It is more a calling than anything else—a vocation, if you will.”
That calling might be an artist’s destiny, but “As for making a living, well, that’s another story,” Caputo, whose latest novel Memory and Desire was published last year, tells Moresby Press. “Very few, if any, writers under, say, age 60, can pay their bills and live decently on their work alone. They have to do something else, a day job, like teaching.”
Writers, musicians, visual artists, actors and others in the arts “probably are driven to create—they can’t not create,” says Dr. Ellen Winner, Professor Emerita in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College and author of the 2019 book, How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration. “The talent and the drive are built-in, [signs of which] can be seen even in early childhood.” |
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BORN TO ROCK. Jim Peterik discovered his love for music and performing as a child. (Photo by Kristie Schram) |
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Jim Peterik, Grammy Award-winning songwriter for the bands Survivor, The Ides of March, and 38 Special, discovered his love for music and performing as a child.
“Music has always been my driving force,” Peterik tells Moresby Press. “My dad was a sax player, and when I was old enough he would take me to the jobs he’d play with his band, The Hi-Hatters. After I learned to play sax in fourth grade, my dad would let me sneak behind the bandstand and play along.”
In sixth grade, Peterik loved playing the ukulele and the saxophone in front of the class, and hearing the applause. “I got totally hooked on people responding to my music. I said, ‘This is what I want.’ Those experiences gave me the confidence to move on in my life-long career in music.”
Even if he were stranded alone on a deserted island with his guitar and knew that no one would hear his tunes, Peterik would “write songs no matter what, even if it was only one hand clapping,” he says. “I have hundreds of songs that no one will ever hear. But the best ones seem to rise to the top.”
Peterik’s next album, a collection of duets called The Power of Two that reunites him with producer Ron Nevison, will be released in April 2025. |
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SANITY AND JOY. Brian Krumm performs with his band, His Barfly Friends. (Photo courtesy of Brian Krumm) |
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Brian Krumm is a Chicago-based, singer-songwriter-guitarist who recorded nine albums with his band The Great Crusades from 1997 to 2017. His latest record, a solo album called Just Fade Away from his band Brian Krumm and His Barfly Friends, was released in 2023.
“I create music because it’s something I’ve done since my teenage years and prior, and that I’ve always enjoyed,” Krumm tells Moresby Press. “It’s part of everyday life and brings me a lot of joy. I’m also lucky enough to know firsthand that my music has brought other people joy or moved them in some way.”
Krumm says he’s compelled to write songs that share stories, “mostly about things that have happened to me in my own life or stories about others that I found interesting or moving. I admire so many songwriters, so a part of me writes just to be somehow included in the ever-growing, ever-fascinating universe of songs.”
Even if he found himself alone under a palm tree with his guitar and knew that no one would hear his compositions, “I would continue to write for my own sanity and joy, to see if I could continue to express myself in a way that made me have an internal smile,” he says.
Krumm’s musical talent and drive run in the family. His daughter Hazel Krumm, a senior in high school, released her own EP of three dreamy, ethereal songs on Oct. 1, called Backroads. |
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MAD HATTER. David Lee Csicsko illustrates books, designs public art, wears hats. (Photo courtesy of David Lee Csicsko) |
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David Lee Csicsko’s artwork, stained glass, and mosaics can be seen in train stations, hospitals, churches, and universities across the United States. In 2012, he designed the Obamas’ Christmas White House.
“I take it very seriously that I earn my living making pictures every day,” Csicsko tells Moresby Press. In a world “that lately seems quite dark, I believe that it’s our imagination that will save us and get us through these crazy times. I aim to create wild, fun, beautiful, engaging pieces that have a powerful effect of making one feel calmer or the possibility of making one smile and relax.”
Csicsko speaks for many in the arts when he says, “I love what I do, and it’s not easy at all, but it’s my life and my world. It’s important to me to be visually understood by as many people as I can reach.”
Growing up in Hammond Ind., a working-class area outside Chicago, he discovered his talent early. “When you’re the kid who can draw, everyone wants a poster for the school play, for a poster contest for the Red Cross, or for an uncle who’s running for a union office in the steel mills. I was that guy. I could draw before I could walk. At the age of 67, I’m still at it, constantly looking for new inspiration and projects. I’ll be drawing till I drop.”
David Lee Csicsko’s most recent book, Iconic Artists, is a collection of his stylized portraits of 50 artists. |
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MAKING ART ‘TO KEEP THE DARKNESS OUT’
Creating can be a form of therapy, Winner says. “Being pulled away from the actual world and experiencing pleasure is therapeutic. Some artists have said that if they were prevented from making art, they’d go crazy. Making art is a way to keep the darkness out.”
Winner, who besides being a Professor Emerita at Boston College is also a senior research associate at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, says that artists are motivated by pleasure, too.
“In the act of creating, they experience ‘flow states,’ the experience of being fully absorbed and thus taken away from whatever is going on in the rest of their lives,” she says. “Flow states are very pleasurable, as [psychologist] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work has shown.”
People in the arts tend to be rebellious, to have something to prove. So it’s not surprising that another of their motivations is to challenge current norms of creating art. In painting, for example, “Impressionism was a challenge to realism,” Winner says, “and cubism was a challenge to impressionism.”
Some artists create their work for political reasons, “to protest injustice, or to curry favor with the powers that be, as in Stalinist art,” she says. As examples of protest art, she cites Pablo Picasso’s anti-war painting Guernica; Bertolt Brecht’s anti-fascist plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui; and George Orwell’s warnings against totalitarianism in his novel 1984 and in his novella Animal Farm.
People who work in the arts seldom admit it, but many are also motivated by a desire for money and fame. For artist Jeff Koons and his team, “clearly a major motive has, at least now, become fame and money,” Winner says. She compares the business-minded Koons to Vincent Van Gogh, who produced more than 900 paintings during his ten-year career but never sold one.
It used to be that when artists talked about inspiration or being inspired, it meant they believed a divine influence had breathed magic into their work.
“I don’t think anyone talks about divine inspiration anymore, which is what the Greeks thought led to creativity,” Winner says. “But certainly people talk about inspiration. Thomas Edison said that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. Having a vision, or being inspired, is necessary. But I think most artists would agree that a lot of very hard work is involved in creating.”
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