Do artists need to be in a community?

JillA's BrillAs, Detail,  44.5 x 18" / 113.03 x 45.72 cm, Acrylic on Paper, 2017

Well, why do you think Vincent had his yellow house? (Guess he thought it was a good idea at the time, lol.)

Artists’ communities have been around for like, forever~speaking of Van Gogh, they say he didn’t much care for the one he left behind in Paris; point is, they were there.

Come to think of it, I guess you could say all the movements were communities, which I’ll define rather loosely here as a bunch of like-minded artists hanging out and working together. Like the folks at St Ives, for instance.

Of course, it’ll be a cold day in hell before we ever even begin to run out of artists’ communities over here: there’s the Saturday Group, the folks at Tam-Awan, pretty much everyone at Angono, Ang INK, and bajillions of others.

I’ve never really been a ‘community’ type, so, this is a bit awkward for me to write, honestly. I’m thinking this was brought on following my first online co-working studio session with an artist based over in the States, which I felt compelled to document because I’d never really done anything like that before ^^;

So in this post I’m just doing a little surface-level reflection on the importance of being part of an artists’ community, why I’ve never really been in one, and how being in one can really be a great idea.
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