We Need Your Art

About eight months ago, a friend of mine sent me a video.

His name is Will Taylor. He is an artist in Austin, Texas. He makes the kind of work that stops you where you stand.

He sent me a TEDx talk by a writer named Amie McNee.

I’ve watched it at least 20x since he shared it with me and I have not stopped sharing it with artists.

A few evenings ago I was sitting with my son Will and his girlfriend Abril.

Abril is a visual artist. A real one. She has drawn and painted since she was small, and she has used her art as therapy for most of her life. A way to move what she is feeling out of her body and onto the page.

I remembered the video. I played it for her.

She went quiet.

Then she said, this is incredible. This is exactly how I see the world.

And within minutes, she got up, got her paper, and started to draw. She draws first. Then watercolor. The work is extraordinary.

I watched a young artist hear permission and act on it in real time.

That is the reason I am writing to you today.

I have sent this video to hundreds of artists now.

Every single one says the same word. Wow.

And somehow I have never sent it to you.

So here it is.

Amie names the thing most artists are carrying right now and will not say out loud.

The guilt.

The quiet belief that making art is selfish while the world is on fire. That you should be doing something more useful. That the piano can wait until the world is fixed.

She takes that belief apart.

Art is not the thing you do once the fires are out. Art is part of how you put them out.

Those are Amie's words. They are also the thing I have been saying for years, under my own banner. Solving The World's Problems Through Art.

I just had not heard anyone say it that cleanly.

She goes further. She says keeping your art to yourself is not humble.

Sit with that.

The art inside you is medicine someone else is waiting for. Holding it back is the selfish act.

And here is where I extend her point.

This message is medicine too.

So I am going to ask you to do two things.

First, watch it. Give it your full focus.

Then forward this email to every artist you know.

Not some of them. All of them. The one who stopped painting. The one who says they are "not really an artist." The one sitting on a gift the rest of us need.

Send it to them.

Because this is how it moves. Artist to artist to artist. One person handing the fire to the next.

That is The Rising. That is the world we are building, one artist at a time.

Those words are stitched onto the back of Amie's coat.

They are also mine.

Make your art.

Then go and tell every artist you know to make theirs.

You can follow Aimee here on Instagram @inspiredtowrite. And thank you to Will Taylor in Austin for putting it in my hands in the first place, check him out here.

Kind regards,

-The Baker

Solving The World's Problems Through Art | #thetimetodoisnow