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.
That's the clarinet I used to use... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything.
To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.
I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.
Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.
I've always wanted to be aware of what's going on around me, and I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time.
Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.