[awfulneutral]

To me it seems like a fundamental motivation - we do art because we want to impress those around us, gain respect, help to attract a mate, make money... Those reasons don't exist without other people to show our art to, and are much less effective if art is too easy to make and too common.

I'm sure there are people who don't have ambition to ever show others the skills they've been building, even in indirect ways, but I doubt it's common... What do you think the motivation is?

[whelp_24]

To make oneself happy, to look at something and say i did this. To pass time and gain skills. Even if you want to show it to people you care about, it's not about the rarity it's about sharing. I may have doubts of the existence of pure altruism but gaining the respect of others is a very A_type personality selfish type view. I don't think everyone is really that concerned with others.

[awfulneutral]

I don't mean "gaining respect" like that's some explicit goal, but I do feel like people are pretty concerned with others, and most of us do really care about the opinions of others. It might be selfish on some level but it's a big part of being human. I can't speak to everyone's relationship with creating, I imagine if your social needs are being met already then you might just use art to pass the time and not care much about it. But usually the outcome we want when sharing our work is to feel appreciated, noticed or special in some way that scales with the amount of effort, time and skill we put in.