Hughes Ch 9

I find it interesting that most artists use their art as an away to escape the monotony of daily life. Henri Matisse was one of those people who put this feeling of relief into words, “When I started to paint, I felt transported into a kind of paradise… in everyday life I was usually bored or vexed by the things people were always telling me I must do. Starting to paint I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone.” Whether it is an escape from the pain of a disease, a career, or family disasters like van Gough, this is their way to express themselves. It is just a bonus to them to get paid for it. Thomas Jefferson even said once, “the art of life is the art of avoiding pain.”

It really is amazing finding out just how many creative geniuses had a problem. Their problems are the reason why they wrote certain things and this helped them to achieve celebrity. Virginia Woolf, who stood for so many things, would not have experimented with half of the ways she wrote had it not been for her mental illness. She would not have been able to become of the founders of modern literature. It sheds a whole new light on what their achievements really meant and what they overcame to achieve them. These people who overcame all of their problems would not have become famous had they not had problems to overcome.