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Art is self-expression. It should be part of a journey and it should be gratifying. On that lifetime's path it is 100% sure that every artist will paint a 'Guernica' or 'Mona Lisa'. The problem is that they'll never realize it.
I don't think that anyone could view my work as a carrier of any social message or comment. I don't make any comments or statements on that plateau. I'm not interested in teaching, preaching, changing or bettering the world in any way through my paintings – but merely for the viewer to come away with even more curiosity than they arrived.
Any serious artist who claims that they are not seeking an audience is lying. We sell our souls to ones who have polarized ideas and passions, conversely hoping they will listen.
I cannot agree with 'revisiting' artists who habitually alter their paintings. A painting is like a sentence and once that sentence has been spoken, those words cannot and should not be recalled from the aether. That opinion, rhetoric, or statement, as flattering, hurtful, or hateful as it might be, is set in stone. Every one of my paintings in sequence is a snapshot, a single frame of a film or the lyrics of a ballad, an original which can never be unspoken or undone.
I realized with the birthing of my “Abstract Iconography”, that it is far easier joining an existing movement than pioneering a new one. Not from the standpoint of uniqueness in which any instigator soon finds equilibrium but from the coterie of 'decision makers' who feel threatened by new movements and who will actively discourage and vilify you merely because their authority is not recognized.
To be a creative success, you need to be possessed. Not by the devil, but by what Leonardo da Vinci called, 'curiosita', which means an insatiable curiosity about life and a passion for continuous learning.
If – in that process – you cannot find a mold in which you fit, make a new one that does.