An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom. It prepares an artist to choose his own limitations.
Interpretation
Discipline is essential for artists, enabling them to freely express their creativity within chosen boundaries.
Wayne Thiebaud's quote highlights the crucial relationship between discipline and freedom in artistic endeavors. Unlike a general approach to training responses, artists must rigorously cultivate their skills, akin to a mathematician's discipline. This process of training equips artists to make informed choices about their creative boundaries, transforming discipline from a mere constraint into a powerful tool that allows for greater artistic expression and freedom.
In practice
In a workshop on art techniques, this quote can inspire artists to embrace the discipline required for mastery.
My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be . . . . I would really think of the bakery counters, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants . . . [it was] always poetic to me.
Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.
What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.
People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting.
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.
There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.
I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.
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