Being an Artist

I have never liked the word discipline.

I prefer dedication.

I prefer devotion.

Discipline demands.

Devotion gives.

And what greater gift,

than to offer that devotion,

that dedication, to your own life?

For me, creativity isn’t born when everything is tidy and separate. It comes from cross-pollination, unexpected combinations, and head-on collisions between things that don’t necessarily go together.

Perfectionism often wears the mask of high standards , ambition , discipline. It parades itself as virtue, a propriety. In reality, it is rarely about the pursuit of excellence but the terror of being perceived as inadequate.

The worst thing you can do is make a plan. The heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The only thing I can rely on is a schedule. I simply show up and work within the limitations I’ve preset for myself.

Oil paint is crushed rock, mixed with liquified fat, and smeared on cloth with a stick. Yet it can suggest light where there is no light, and space where there can be no space.

At some point you're going to have to make peace with the fact that paint is a physical material, and either a.) it’s going to work in the way that you put it down on canvas,... See more

And he doesn’t make ‘art’, by the way—he makes things . Because art is a lie, he says.

But art will also save the world. He says that too.

I wanted to show the ins and outs, and the unglamorous underbelly of this life. I have made it, I've done well, I continue to do well, and it's OK to say that. But it takes a lot of discipline, a lot of hard work, and luck, and I wanted to show that part of it too—in order to tell people that this is possible.

The closer I looked, and the more I learned about his approach to work, the more I was able to understand both the routine he keeps, and the messes he makes. There are intense moments of accumulation and clutter and filth, yes, but surrounded by space—space for work, for reflection, and for painting.