Why do you create? Why is it important to you to express yourself in an art form?

Creativity in itself is a way thru which an a person can manifest his/her induviduality. Each induvidual is born with the gift of creativity, with the oly difference that some discover the gift way earlier than others. creativity in any form, makes a person feel more confident and superior about themselves. It is one of the basic keys that help distinguish one induvidual from the other. Just imagine that u hav created something that is completely a byproduct of ur imagination and ur already garnering praises for ur work. Im sure it wud give u that extra edge/thrill/boost whatever u name it and will make u want to make urself more better and magnetic with each dawning day. Creativity is the dormant inner motivation of man, which, when fully awoken can push him to the zenith of success. Subconsciously, every human has the urge to create something unique and magnificient, just for the sheer joy and concentrated focus it gives them in life. Looking bac, ud notice that ppl who wer crazy enuf to believe in the wonders of their creativity wer the ones who challenged history and re-wrote its pages.

I suppose the question isn't so much about why we create as much as it is about why we create art? So I suppose it's not so difficult to understand then. We as humans have a general urgency to want create things right? So art, a visual creation, is simply the most visibly quantifiable form of creation. Whether art lives on after it's creation is another discussion. But it helps to want to know that art is useful, that it has a purpose, and therefore a life of its own, in order to spur on the next creation. Creation and re-creation after all is a cyclical iterative thing, and that ends up being an emotive experience.

For me, I express my feeling by writing chinese Calligraphy. I always be quite and clam down when I am writing Calligraphy. It seems everything will be alright. I think it's a way to show your personality and education. Although the script I write is quite unique. It's 瘦金體. Therefore I get a lot of fun and happiness when I introduce it to others cause not many people have heard it. In China, people always believe that we can see one's personality by his calligraphy. So that's why I choose Calligraphy to express myself. It's a good method to understand others.

Some superb answers here already, so I'll be brief. The main reason I make stuff up is because I want to hear a story. And sometimes I learn that the story I want to hear hasn't been told yet, or it has been told, but in a very different way. In order to hear the story, I write it - and that could be anything from a little comedy song to a whole opera. If I don't write the story, it keeps nagging at me, tugging away at my attention until it gets told. Also, I want to be immortal.

Personally, Im involved in large-scale collage, fiction writing, music, web design, graphic design, and engineering The desire to create is said to be an expression of one's imagination. But it goes beyond that for me, its not just having-a-good-idea, its taking it from something that exists in your mind and turning it onto something that you can show someone, something that you can point to and say, "Look at that, I did that." Growing up, i always felt as though i couldnt sit still if i wasnt making something. As you mentioned, even in pregistoric times, this must have been part of society, that burning sensation that continuosly pushes you to create something new, to express yourself with what you have arround you. When people feel like somethibg has inspired them, and you know that it csme from you, it's that most powerful feeling there is...

I write poetry mostly. I sketch occasionally as well. A lot of what I write has to with catharsis. Some of it originates from other people who have spoken to me through their work and there's a desire to grab those words floating in my head and make sense out of them. I once told a friend that to me writing was the mental equivalent of an orgasm. A particular piece that has flowed and come together well leaves me spent, drained and with enough afterglow to leave me smiling at the memory later. The frustration of not finding the right words is the equivalent of blue balls simply because it makes me very cranky. So in a nutshell, I write so that my brain gets laid.

Writing my answer as a western classical musician residing in the SF Bay area, sometimes income is great, and sometimes the effort is giving one's all. Still, we commit our lives to art. Here's a history of the reasons I have done it and continue to do it: When I was eight years old, piano was great, but violin had been my first love since I was born I suppose, partly because I loved the music, and partly because my dad did it, and it was natural for me to model myself after him. At my dad's suggestion (I did not feel I could argue with him) I switched from violin to cello at age 11, played for some months, then quit without regret, then started seriously studying cello  at 14 when my dad got me a private cello teacher. On the one hand, it didn't seem to matter a whole lot what instrument I played – I gave it my all, regardless. It was just my nature to concentrate that way, and perhaps to want to please my dad or be like him. He helped me practice, which was a very father/son type of bonding activity for us. On the other hand, initiating practicing on the cello was hard. I rarely did more than an hour.  Perhaps this is because violin was my first and truer love. On the other hand, when I practiced, I gave it my all – I am one of the most impatient of people. In a year, I was expressing my passion on the instrument, and, to answer the quora question, I just felt like I had it in me – I sensed that I had something profound to express through the instrument. By then I had sublimated my desire to play the violin; any bowed stringed instrument, or piano, would have been nearly as good (so it seems, looking back. Now I know differently). Still, in my early teens, I only did two hours daily. I suppose I did not get up to four hours daily until age 17 or 18 because I was not practicing violin. It's been one of the major issues of my life. I think I was 14 or maybe a few years older when I knew that personality was an expression of love or lack of love. By 18 when filing for conscientious objector status for the Viet Nam War draft, I knew that music (classical, and cello in particular) was an expression of love, but wrote that I hoped it was also expressed in my personality – I didn't want to be a one sided musician who loved only when he played. I got tendonitis during my second year of professional playing, one reason being that I am not a violinist, but deeply wanted to be; I was in denial. Another reason is that I worked my "violinist" body too hard in my effort to gain the strength I wanted to play the instrument as a violin would sound, yet as I wanted the cello to sound (there were other reasons too). Having heard nightmares of other musicians' tendonitis, I decided to quit playing and get well. Three months later the tendonitis persisted, so I quit for the indefinite future. This became in three weeks a life and death crisis, which I weathered by divorcing myself from all music and my musical friendships. Why was it life and death? Because this wasmy life. Life without music, that is, not performing, was "why bother?" I knew I was exceptionally talented and that I had a career ahead of me. I gave my all, absolutely, in practicing and to this life, and there did not appear to be another way to live that was inspiring or worthwhile. I did not consider the question more deeply. Even as I write, at this moment, I feel issues of emotions, power, and communication. Of course, I was aware I did not have other skills for earning a living, but that had nothing to do with the issue at hand. That was a speck on the landscape of loss. At a friend's encouragement, I did resume playing after nine months or so, in restaurants at first, then private gigs, and at an exceptionally high level. No union work however, as I had learned that I could not practice without incurring tendonitis. A couple years later I went with my cello and restaurant and solo music, down to Ojai, CA where I established and conducted a chorus and co-founded/co-directed a performing arts group. I also heard Krishnamurti speak that summer. He stated that humanity is experiencing a "crisis of consciousness." This is the same reason I had given up on involving myself in political campaigns some years earlier – the issue of humanity was not politics, but at root, consciousness. I saw more clearly than before the justification for my artistic life, and that art is a realistic solution (aside from impediments of language), and one of the most potent, and one which I could bring to bear on society more effectively than any other. At this time too, I came to understand through looking at how I used to practice cello, that there was a strong spiritual aspect to some of my exercises, in addition to the exquisitely subtle expression of love that I heard in music of the masters and which I wanted the public to experience. A spiritual appreciation of my approach has been the basis of my music teaching since 2007. After a pair of performances in Ojai, I wrote the prospectus for my organization and set off hitchhiking with my cello seeking a permanent site elsewhere, looking at sites in Arizona and California, playing there and here, and having some profound cello performances before life took some more compelling personal turns. I had crystallized my understanding of art when I wrote the first edition of the prospectus in 1980, and that became my driving force and my primary creative impetus with respect to the organization. During my site search I was not engaged full time in creating art or recreating it, but believe me, I was driven as an artist, no less than I had been as a professional cellist. Cello remained in the interim a more personal public expression. Art, at least what I call "art," was for me at that time (and still is, with deeper and broader insight) a potent means of spiritual awakening and promotion of spiritual growth in individuals and societies. This is stated in the preamble to my prospectus, and in my view, is the reason, whether consciously or unconsciously, anyone would truly want to have the deepest artistic experience. In the time since, I added to the preamble my understanding that art expresses our yearning for the divine. Art is also an apt, perhaps one of the most apt expressions, of the inner conflict we experience owing to our divine nature being both integrated and distilled from our experience of conditional "love" and our experience of separation from our divine creator, which I call God. I won't get into the attributes of God or what others call Allah or Supreme Being, or for whom (not what) people have other names. This inner conflict may be part of my drive to perform, or maybe I am compelled to show to people the more divine side of my being. I am pretty sure music, violin in particular, was intended to be my life's path (writing from a strictly spiritual perspective). This in itself will provide ample incentive to an artist to persevere in the face of hardship or other obstacles. The same applies to people in other paths – whatever it is, one will feel irresistably compelled to follow the path – most of the time. There are exceptions, and they create some disturbances. A lot of life has occurred over the past 10, and particularly the past three years. When I wonder about my life in terms of both cello and music, a question arises, since I have now new and recurring physical limitations related to age that have kept me from regaining my former skills, of changing life paths. When I think of persevering on the cello, it is on account of my gift, and nothing else will express that gift so subtly and aptly, except an alternative bowed stringed instrument. There may this time around, be ego involved in that motivation, which formerly was never a factor in my artistic aims and creation: I have not made known, that is manifested to the public at large, my gift of musical interpretation as it has developed in recent years and continues to develop, despite all the physiological issues. Had I so manifested that gift, perhaps I could put aside the instrument more easily. Additionally, and more deeply than motivations of ego, the reason my gift compels me to keep striving is that it remains, so far as I know, the greatest contribution I can at this time envision myself making to humanity in the future. I still have the dream of establishing my academy of art, but I also still lack the maturity to manifest it as I envision it. When I look at what I have done with composition, I see the possibility of tremendous impact, but so far I have not the confidence to give up cello, which I fear would be necessary. That impact is somewhat different than playing the music of others, but generally, the priority remains, to give people an experience that awakens their heart and inspires personal transformation. Conducting is something I love, and can be a strong means of opening people to Love. Why conduct? Again, it is an expression of my artistic gift that also serves a higher purpose. Beyond this, which applies to all my artistic effort, I can only say it seems, in the absence of some enlightening insight or life changing event, to be my life path. I tried non-artistic careers in the two decades I did not play, and for better or worse, sabotaged them. Ultimately, I hope, one way or another, to inspire people with an all too rare experience of their Godliness. If cello is the way, then I must of course experience the same when I play before that can happen. These are the various reasons and levels of motivation for my engaging in an artist's life. I forgot, it's been so long, but was reminded by Indraneel Pole's last sentence above - when I create art, as opposed to recreating art (the music of someone else) I feel most "real." There is no other word for it. Especially it seems, when I do visual art, which for me feels like food for my viscera, whereas music seems like food for my soul. I don't know the answer to that one - yet. It's been a long time since I had that feeling.

There is no 'why'. I know because I draw. You just feel like doing it. For no particular reason. You don't start thinking "Today, I'll create a masterpiece". It gives you pleasure which is arguably one of the best. Even if your final product sucks. It doesn't always go as you planned. But the process gives you amazing pleasure.

1. Seeing my own completed artworks, give me a sense of accomplishment, which I couldn't find in so many other things. I need to feel that, every once in a while to stop myself from thinking "WHAT AM I DOING IN THIS LIFE?" 2. I have stories to tell, stories which could be told only by me, through my art, just the way I imagined. (I feel that I'm not doing justice to myself, if I'm not working hard to make that happen)