The Mother of the Arts?

My original intention for this blog was to explore various quotations that had in the past grabbed me, but the form was so new to me that I didn’t realize the dailiness of a blog, how quotations, except for the one on the title description, disappeared. Does anyone read earlier posts of another’s blog? Probably not. Yesterday an editor of a local newspaper phoned to ask me to write a weekly column on the arts. I have always wanted to have my own column (this blog partially fulfills that desire), but now I am hesitant. Would I have the stamina for 52 columns? Ten years ago I had a weekly spot in the paper, but that was of profiles of artists and craftspeople. No shortage of those around here. Is it true as my new title description says that religion is the mother of the arts, and if so, does it go the other way, that the arts have a religious function? Does this religious function strive to give form to the dailiness of life, to the weekliness of life, to the bits and pieces, some that seem important (birth of a child) and some that seem unimportant (dusting the living room furniture)? My favorite contemporary artist does painting after painting of the view out his studio window – an ordinary backyard. He does huge paintings of a banana, of a lemon, of a teapot. You never look at a lemon the same way after you have seen his lemons.