Thinking about a comment By Hamish Keith

I'm reading Hamish Keith's autobiography at the moment 'Native Wit' (This is the HTML version of the PDF put out by Random House NZ Ltd). It's a great read (especially now I'm up to where he's working as a junior assistant at the Auckland City Art Gallery with Colin McCahon. I'm thinking on this small piece of commentary at the moment...

" saying you are an artist and believing you are an artist, with however much conviction and passion, will not make you one. There is an equation to being an artist which is beyond the power of an individual to complete however fragile or tenuous it might be, the artist and the work have to make a connection with the culture in which they come from - disconnected is disconnected. The New Zealand official cultural pendulum seems to have swung from denying arts value to a point completely the opposite, giving too much benefit to too many doubts. I sometimes feel that the complete lack of connection between what is claimed to be a work of art and the culture in which it exists is, in some perverse way, seen as a virtue. It must be good because nobody gets it. There is always a case for subsidy and subvention, but it ought not to be a permanent state of affairs"
Hamish Keith 'Native Wit' Random House 2008

I'm not sure I agree with his first opening sentence. I think we are what we want to be and we become what we want to be (whatever our bent) through focusing our passion and having the conviction to follow through and put in the hard work.

But what he says about an artists need to connect with the culture in which they come from is surely wise. His views on art are based on his experience of living and working daily with art; with a group of peers who were artists that shaped and contributed to our cultural identity and have continued to influence New Zealand artists enormously to date.

I'm mulling on what I identify with, where my connection is and (humbly) what I can offer to the culture I belong to with the emergent art that I make.