Wall Mart doesn’t sell art. Art isn’t something that can be industrialized, mass manufactured or produced.

Ever heard the term “starving artists”? There’s a reason artists and creative souls often live lowly, somewhat poor lives. It’s that they don’t care. They aren’t motivated by accumulating things and moneys. Their motivations are the mysteries that comprise their uniqueness.

Today I walked through the bookstore and I perused the offerings on the shelves with so many bindings that I strongly suspected were written for what I consider —the wrong reasons.

If an author sets about his work simply to make a living, or receive a paycheck… (s)he has trespassed into a hallowed garden.

True artists, writers, musicians, singers, painters, architects, sculptors, storytellers, designers, and dancers cannot help but do what they do. Sometimes they don’t have reasons. Or, they don’t trouble themselves over the need to figure out the mystical “why.” They are free from such hesitations, wonderings.Their very DNA bleeds with a passion to produce. And that’s enough.

Sometimes the art comes from their guts… their soul. Sometimes their mind, their disciplined grind, their skill applied to the work will birth the beauty. And, sometimes, they are (a)mused to amaze us.

Artistic, imaginative, contemplative people inherit their gears, their wiring from the great Creator… God.

Real art comes from sketch pads, journals, garages, makeshift studios, and simple hideaways. Then, wherever art can find a celebrated home… that’s a hallowed hall. It might be something such as a museum, venue, or library. A gathering place for things of the heart.

True art comes from an invisible place: A dream, a thought, a sound. And how do you put a price tag on something so beautiful as that. A creative soul molds imagination into something everyone can see, hear, and appreciate. It’s the mystery of art.