John Dewey wrote in 1934:

Industry has been mechanized and an artist cannot work mechanically for mass production...Artists find it incumbent ...to betake themselves to their work as an isolated means of 'self-expression.' In order not to cater to the trend of economic forces, they often feel obliged to exaggerate their separateness to the point of eccentricity.

I am consoled after reading one of my youngest student's journal entries. She quotes Klee:

Colour has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase it, I know that it has a hold of me forever...Colour and I are one. I am a painter.