An artist cannot, and must not be restricted by medium. To be an artist is to see through medium, because what is medium without the core substance of a feeling? The essence of art is transparent to medium. One day a canvas, another a piece of old wood lodged with polished rocks. What matters is the potency of the feeling when it is transcribed to a medium. To this extent, the artist can only prepare him/herself as best as possible with tools and materials that might be thought of as useful when the time comes, and the ecstasy of creation begins. What, then, binds an artist to a medium? I believe it to be a combination of external forces; an internal force wouldn't naturally fuel this desire. To make a living, the artist is required to label him/herself in a most unnatural manner. Maybe aware, but perhaps unknowingly, the artist begins to create personal limits, via the self image. The viscous cycle perpetuates until the artist has grown accustomed to his image and supposed knowledge. But humans are curious ones, and I would wager to say that the most joy arises out of a childlike satisfaction of being, an absence of ego, an exoneration of self. Thus, if the artist is true to himself/herself, at some point he/she may realize how absurdly unnatural he/she has been, and a crisis may occur. Orson Welles has said "the marketplace is the enemy of the artist." And it is perhaps true that within art, the marketplace is defined by medium. Behind all compartments of art is a desire to reason the irrational. Maybe there is a forgetting that great art is an experience to be felt, not something to be dissected and reasoned down to a quark. The outside world desires rationality, to make sense of the artist and to define him/her with words.