Art and natural disasters...

Natural disasters happen, and art succumbs to its pressures just as much as anything else might. This concept gets me thinking... should it bother me to know that a certain percentage of my paintings will one day be destroyed in some sort of destructive event, such as fire, flood, mudslide, revenge, hurricane, tornado, or toxic mold invasion? I think it should bother me, but only if it serves to inspire me to paint more.

The world will always have a limited supply of Picassos and even the most protective of measures can't save all of them from the ravages of nature, man, or time. I suppose I'm no Picasso, but the template is the same. If I only paint a limited number of works, and a certain percentage of them can expect to be ruined or destroyed each decade, then eventually the event horizon will be met, right? This means that each of us artists should be striving to beat the clock a little bit, by making a little bit more and spreading our impact a little bit further.

Eventually, something is going to fall, and it may be your favorite piece or your best work and there will be nothing you can do to stop it from happening. I'll do my best to embrace this reality even if it is a tad painful to recognize...