In a recent interview of Tom Stoppard on the Charlie Rose Show, Stoppard talks about one of the main characters, a philosopher (I believe is the real life Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin) in his epic Play The Coast of Utopia  who has the opportunity to live in France or Germany, countries, at the time where he could write and speak with out fear of being imprisoned (or worst). But he preferred to stay in St. Petersburg, where it was dangerous but where he believed his ideas would be heard. Big Fish Small Pond.

With the Internet, there are a lot of artist, in all categories, who are being seen. But we wonder are we being heard, is there just to much noise? Are we getting drowned out by all of the images that are available?

A post on Art and Perception ask the question on why is there such a focus in some art school on learning how to impress gallery owners, collectors and art magazine editors? What has happen to art for art sake? Are we pandering? Are we not willing to spend the time to go deeper in our work, putting in the effort that would result in art that gets to stand on its on own? Martin Amis talks about the need to go deeper when writing, avoiding the expected cartoon version of life when telling a story. Forgive me but George Lucas made the same Star Wars’ movie six times (bless him, but).

When it comes to visual art, I wonder how many of us struggle with the need to go deep and to speak to something in our paintings etc that is not a cliche, but rather an honest interpretation of what it is that we see and want to say about who we are and how we lived. Question, if we went deep would we be heard?