"I don't want to feel like I'm writing poetry. I'm happy to be making information machines, because that's the honest truth of the craft. The poetry lies in what those machines do; the art is in the output. To me, writing a boring program whose code is very clever is like writing a boring poem in beautiful calligraphy and arguing that the beauty of the calligraphy makes the poem better."
Speaking as someone with a bachelor in fine arts, this rings very true for me. In Dutch, when an idea isn't working out, we have a saying: "het komt niet uit de verf," which literally translates as "it doesn't leave the paint."
With the exception of certain modern and contemporary art pieces, a painting is about what is being depicted, not about the fucking paint. The paint matters of course, but it shouldn't take the spotlight (again, ignoring self-referential topics like paintings about the experience of paint).
Speaking as someone with a bachelor in fine arts, this rings very true for me. In Dutch, when an idea isn't working out, we have a saying: "het komt niet uit de verf," which literally translates as "it doesn't leave the paint."
With the exception of certain modern and contemporary art pieces, a painting is about what is being depicted, not about the fucking paint. The paint matters of course, but it shouldn't take the spotlight (again, ignoring self-referential topics like paintings about the experience of paint).