When you've worked in and around the arts for most of your adult life you get used to the occasional odd glance from people when you tell them what you do for a living. There's still a great deal of suspicion on the part of the general public as to the legitimacy of the arts, and not just as a career choice either — the whole idea of creative expression unsettles a good many people.

Now I can't really blame them, especially here in North America where we don't have the cultural traditions of Europe. Sure we have art galleries that display some of the finest work in the world, and North America has produced and continues to produce artists of the highest calibre in all media. But those people, for the most part, have succeeded not because of their environment, but in spite of it.

Our antipathy to the arts is deep-seated; it's not something that just sprung up overnight. It is an ingrained aspect of North American society, deeply rooted and firmly embedded since the first Puritan set foot upon our shores.

The story we're told is they came here seeking freedom from religious persecution. What's probably closer to the truth is that not that many people were thrilled with their brand of austere Christianity. Puritans were probably the originators of every cliché you've ever heard about the merits of hard work from sun up to sun down (except on Sundays, of course) until you died and went to heaven to receive your eternal reward.

Life on earth was not meant for pleasure or for fun. We're here to repent for the sin of Adam and Eve so we can pass muster to get into heaven. The idea of doing something for purely aesthetic reasons wouldn't even have occurred to the Puritans and they would have thought anyone who did so misguided at best, an evil sinner at worst. To people who genuinely believed that "idle hands were the devil's playground," the idea of taking the time needed to think about writing a poem or contemplating the play of light and shadow in preparation for a drawing would have been as foreign as cannibalism is to you and me.