Here is a little article developed from a response to a comment by Sunshine to the article On Working Without an Audience.
A Quiet Act of Hope
Journal Entry: January 10, 2026 – 8:12 AM
I have thought about this for many years, usually while working alone in the studio, usually without making much noise about it even to myself. To make art at all is to take up a quiet position of hope.
While we work, we assume something without ever saying it out loud. We assume the world will continue. We assume culture will hold, or at least leave enough fragments behind to be found later. We assume there will be a future that can receive what we are making. Every studio practice rests on that assumption of continuance.
In that sense, the work is never only for the present moment. It is a message cast forward in time. We are speaking to our future self, a future exhibition, future viewers and future collectors. We are also speaking across generations, both backward and forward, into a long conversation we did not begin and will not finish. That posture alone is hopeful. It says that the thread is unbroken.
But there is also a simpler truth underneath all of this. What else are you going to do?
Artists have always worked inside conditions that did not offer reassurance. History is full of collapse, war, uncertainty, and long stretches where the future looked anything but guaranteed. I often think about how artists like Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró continued working through World War I, World War II, and the aftermath that followed. They did not pause until the world felt stable again. Stability never arrives.
Some of their most enduring work emerged directly from those conditions. Not as decoration, not as denial, but as response. As witness. As a way of staying human inside inhuman circumstances. The fact that those works still speak to us now is not incidental. It is evidence that creative attention can pass through devastation without being extinguished by it.
This tells me something important and also humbling. Individual lives are brief. Careers are brief. Even civilizations, when viewed from a historical distance, are brief. Every thing comes and goes. We are but momentary whiffs of smoke moving through an immeasurably long stretch of time. Accepting that does not make working meaningless. It clarifies it and contextualizes it.
The task is not to attempt secure permanence. The task is to show up with sincerity while we are here.
To keep working is neither bravado nor optimism. It is closer to a disciplined trust. A trust that turning inward toward the heart, toward what feels necessary and true, is still the right orientation even when the external world seems to be in chaos.
In that way, making art is a posture. It says: I am here. I am listening. I am adding my small signal to the larger field. I do not know who will receive it or when, but I will send it anyway.
That, to me, is a quiet act of hope.
This moved me deeply, Cecil. Thank you for weaving my small comment into something so expansive and resonant. Your reflection on art as a quiet act of hope speaks to the core of why we continue creating, especially in uncertain times. I felt seen in your words—and reminded that even our most solitary gestures are part of a much longer, enduring conversation. Grateful to be in it with you.
Cecil - This is very nice . I've been a fan of yours for many years now and enjoy not only your artwork but also your writings ... some like this piece are very touching and much appreciated - As an artist it hits a note that feels good - thank you - Lori Dorn