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.
I was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.
I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life.
I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.
Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.
So when I realised I could sing for a living - do what I loved and be paid for it - I thought, 'This is unbelievable. Unbelievable!' And that feeling has never left me.
When Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought; beauty, he said, is unity in variety! Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature,-or, more exactly, in the variety of our experience. Poetry, painting, the arts are the same search, in Coleridge's phrase, for unity in variety.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.