"All artists borrow, great Artists steal"  Picasso

A favorite Irish tenor on a PBS St. Patrick's day special, years ago looks into the camera with his chest thrust out like a boxer but with a twinkle in his eye, and prefaces his singing of "My Heart Will Go On": "First time I heard it, I turned to me wife and said,'This one's mine!"

That is how you steal art! Straight Up, giving no apology, allowing no doubt, totally centered on that which caught your full being and demanded you make it your's. This is not borrowing because your only intention is to own this thing, climb into it and run it full bore through all its gears, red line it until it shakes your guts apart; strip it down to see what it hides, build it back "your way" and drive it until the passion tank is empty or the "art police" haul your body from its remains.

Art without passion is decoration. Excitement without committment once the adrenalin wears off is but hormonal distraction. Passion fills every place within the human psyche, shrinks fear and doubt to the slightly annoying buzz of some insect, and dominates the artist with Art.

Do not go to art museums out of some sense of obligation, or history, or simply to walk about seeing names but to seek the trail of passion in little nuggets, veins of golden awakening leading us toward the prize we will steal.  I may be in museums every day of a week, or only once in several months, and its been years since I simply toured a museum. "I know it when I see it!" may be the most naive statment of Art but it is also the most profound.