Why stop now

"Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you."
Robert Henri

"I'd be an ax murderer, if I didn't paint."
John Alexander

"That stroke you are about to make on a painting is as much you as the next word you utter or the next breath you take."
Harley Brown

"The pain passes, but the beauty remains."
Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves."
Paul Gauguin

Living in the current culture, I sometimes say to myself, "Maybe
I should stop, but somehow I can't." Most of us probably know that feeling. Shamefaced, regretful, guilty.

I never get that feeling when I'm reading classic short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino, or watching great films like Rashomon, Rosemary's Baby, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Onibaba. Why stop now when I'm amazed by great and powerful experiences.

I never get that dismal feeling when I'm creating my drawings or music. I also stop being anxious or lonely. There's no need for a hiatus. No need for this constant fear of fading away without a purpose. I know I won't be bored to death in the world of ideas.

I'm doing things I couldn't even imagine years ago. There aren't enough words to describe that feeling.