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He still has no notion of how far his talent will carry him or whether he has the proper background to be significant as an artist.

But let us say that he has made the decision, has [[strikethrough]] begun to [[/strikethrough]] taken whatever amount of training he thinks is necessary, or that he can get, and has begun to paint as an independent artist.

He may look at a half-finished canvas standing before him and suddenly ask himself: "Who cares a hang whether I paint this thing or not?"

The answer is rather obvious, Nobody.

Nobody cares in the least except the painter himself.

He may continue to plague himself with such thoughts as these, "Here I am a grown man (or woman) puttering around with a lot of paint when there's no indication that I'm any great genius or am even going to be worth a nickel as a painter. Why dont I go out and drive a truck, or saw wood, or do something tangible?"

I can well imagine the most sensitive and talented painter crumbling under that kind of self-examination. Yet I doubt that there's an artist alive who hasn't had such qualms. Because the simple truth is that nobody else does care, and for that reason the artist himself has to care a great deal.

After an artist has become somewhat established as such his doubts may subside. After he has lived through the amazing experience of having someone buy