I am 65 years old, or as the french would say, I have 65 years. I have been a professional painter (artist type) for 40 of those years, and during all that time I have been passionate about painting - I mean totally obsessed with the subject of painting, and totally involved with the doing of painting. To this day, my whole life revolves around the paintings that I am doing, or have done, or might do in the future.
The world could come to an end tomorrow and it wouldn't bother me a bit, as long as I could keep on painting. To paint is my role in life, and the meaning of my life. Painting is my reality, it is what I care deeply about. I understand the world, to the degree that I do understand it, through painting. Politics to me is a subset of painting. Philosophy is a subset of painting. God is a subset of painting.
Painting is in fact much older than politics, or philosophy, older even than religion. There's a good argument to be made that painting has recorded the history of the human spirit with greater precision than any other recording technology.
But painting is, and always has been a language in code. Encoded within a painting of say, Pierre Bonnard, is far more human information than what is contained in a photograph of the same period and subject. Paintings are not, and never have been literal. Paintings are mystical, rather than literal transcriptions of reality.
What is called "visual art" today involves technologies that go far beyond painting, and have little to do with the ancient practice of painting. These technologies are very popular and profitable, and flashy, but they don't interest me in the slightest. They are not eternal, whereas painting itself is eternal. Wherever there are human beings, there will be paintings -- past, present, and future. And paintings of whatever sort are sure to outlast electronic visualizations of whatever sort.
There are a limited number of what I would call "eternal" art forms -- which is to say, art forms that are essential to the human spirit -- art forms that have always existed and always will exist. Possibly even before humanity and after. They are Dance, Theater, Music, Painting, Sculpture, Poetry, and maybe Architecture. Not Movies. Not Photography. Not Motorcycle Maintenance, and not Cooking.
The word "Art" has been bandied about, and stretched and distorted to such a degree, politicized and used, that it barely has any meaning left at all. We no longer think of Art as being holy -- but in fact for most of the history of mankind, art has been indeed a very sacred thing. Not something one does just for fun, or for a hobby, or for a way to make money.
Me, I do art the ancient way. To me, art is not a career, it is a calling. It is holy. Maybe I'm overly devout, and certainly I'm flat broke. But I'm not the only one.