Art is a way of reaching life on another level.
When the first cave painter scratched an animal on a stone wall, he was undertaking a unique action. He was expressing his own consciousness beyond living his life.
He was inventing.
Suddenly, his experience had another use. It could be gathered up and transformed into painting, creation.
Civilizations rise and fall, come and go, and their fate is decided by untold millions of people who refrain from taking the path of the artist.