The silver-lining, I think, is that the world at large is slowly slowly waking up to the idea that creating beauty and adding aesthetic value to the world is, in fact, a value for which the creator should be remunerated.

The ideals of Steemit and the way it’s been designed to work seem to be playing a smallish-and-growing part of that, even if it isn’t being fully applied on a practical day-to-day level.

One of the things that I was always very guilty of throughout my life, but which I’ve been trying to change, is not appreciating that when I enjoy some for of art, it’s an almost moral imperative to find a way to pay the artist for the value they’ve added to my life. It’s not a product like a iron or a bottle of some craft beer, but that’s exactly the point.

I don’t think anything of plunking down five, six dollars for a good small-batch pale ale, so why should I hesitate to throw five dollars to the busking saxophone player that I stop and listen to and intensely enjoy. It took me some time to get this, but, ultimately, I’m coming around to realize that the saxophone player is providing more value to me than the beer, because I enjoy the music more than I enjoy the drink. So why should it be somehow different to pay for the beer which adds to my life but not for the music which adds to my life even more? (So I’ve started to tip the saxophone player regularly when I stop and listen to his music. It’s absolutely worth it, and we’ve actually become somewhat friendly).

Maybe some people think there’s something more “noble” about art that puts it outside “commerce,” and there’s a long history, I think, of that kind of attitude. But with the way the world
is structured, there’s nothing noble about starving and that’s the (worst case scenario) end result artists who don’t get paid...Or, artists, to save their lives and fees their families, will make less and less art, until the options for beauty in the world are severely diminished and life becomes a palette of duller and stabbed grays. (Nothing against the color gray of course...I love it in landscapes...)

Outside steem, have you found any attitude shift regarding payment for the value your are providing people? It may be harder to figure out ways to pay a visual artist who’s work I see and appreciate and from which I receive value into th added happiness and satisfaction in my life. But I’ve been trying through those websites where you can be a fractional patron of artists, and trying to hire artists to do work that I may not have needed but or could have gotten cheaper from some industrialized artist-mill that exist in some countries.

I’m no saint. Far from it. Everyday I feel like I have a lifetime of artists who I’ve wronged when I swayed to their music, sighed at their brushstrokes, and lost my breath at the sight of the peaceful grace in their dancing.

I’m just, I guess, trying to make up for that now, and I’m hoping that you have experienced people becoming at least a little more conscious of the value you provide to them individually, and compensated you for that value.

Your work is truly beautiful. I’m partial to the Battlebox promo art you did. The way you show movement is incredible (I look it and the explosion is actually happening over some points of time...somehow you’ve captured it so that, from my perspective, it’s not just a still, but seems like it had motion over time...it’s really unique).

Thanks for your work!