Stephen Shore - letter to a young artist

Stephen Shore gets the last word in this last post for 2012.
In his letter to a student Shore talks about the need for integrity and to make work for the right reasons, to question and to do it for yourself.
I've always felt that the first and most important audience for one's work is one's self. And if anybody else likes what you do that's a bonus and not a given. It's really about authenticity, finding the work from somewhere deep inside yourself, a combination of head and heart. Of course there is never ever an arrival. After all one can always do it better and as there are never any answers only more questions, the exploration continues... Happy New Year!

As a post script to Stephen Shore's letter a friend sent me this quote from the poet Rilke, who is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. I liked the quote, it's about questions and answers:
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.