John Reid said:
......I would like something that I made to survive for a while after I am gone to the "Happy Hunting Ground" as a gift to my children and the young at heart. .... but you know somehow I do (care) and I don't mind admitting it. Ego you say ? Well artists usually do have some of that it is true; why else would we do what we do?
To your first point, it may be politically incorrect, but I sometimes think that the artistic urge, as well as creative, inventive, architectural and engineering urges, are stronger in men than in women. Not universally - there are bound to be exceptions, some women are for sure phenominally creative, but I sometimes wonder about this as a kind of general rule. Women often make themselves much busier than men with other, often more immediate things such as child care and home economics.... Speaking for myself I find it very easy to be in my workshop and forget the time of day, while the kids need to be given their lunch. I consciously have to monitor myself and keep an eye on the immediate and more practical things.
Anyway, sometimes the notion crosses my mind that women’s creative outlet is more likely to be having and raising children than inventing a better washing machine or miniature signal system or building a new tunnel. Men cannot transcend their own mortality by creating new people so we have a stronger compensating tendency to invent and tinker and make neat stuff which we hope will somehow outlive us instead.
So call me crazy already; it’s just a thought…
The gals eventually end up enjoying both their kids and our creations ! :rolleyes:
To your second point, my feelings are maybe a little different: Once the urge strikes me to make something I feel restless until I get going on it. I think the artists’ urge is a pretty strong one, with or without ‘ego’ being involved. I think I’m happy just to be doing a thing, and i don’t really care whether other people like it, complement me on it, or even see it, 'though it is always nice to show something off. But the actual doing is the source of satisfaction for me, and getting the thing I’m making to meet or surpass my initial concept. I find I am not creating things for the approval of other people. (That said, to give and get feedback on a forum of peers such as this one, where we inform and inspire one another, is an important exchange of courtesies !) 
