Don't know where to start. So I wont. There's just so much, so well laid out.

I agree with virtually every word.

It's a relief to read of another's willingness to rattle the creative intelligentsia, heaven forbid.

The stuffy and moldy stench of old academe floats through my mind here. Recalling my first wife who's doctorate thesis, (Art) was rejected by old stodgy men whose good ol boys tenured authority positions came close to destroying her.

Simply. It was her impossibly rich chalk, pastel central Illinois farm steads that had them scratching their itchy crotches from envy. Envy that comes from those whose scariest inner secret is that their art is shit.

And yet, these same arbiters of Universities today are the ones who determine who is, and which isn't an artist. Its these same, leather elbowed bufoons, throw in a meerschaum pipe if you wish, that determine self publishing is, ahem, beneath, yes beneath...

Art is where you find it. A ten year old doing sand art on a Guatemalan beach, the twenty five year old drop out who writes her guts out crying as she does it, not caring what the judges think.

Oh yeah, if you like the stuff hanging in the big galleries then so be it.

Thank god for places like Medium, Jesus Christ, who'd a thought? The idea would've been laughed out of the high and mighty, ivy cluttered, learning halls just ten or fifteen years ago.

Thanks Elle, I needed that today.

Tom