I was reading this over my daughter’s shoulder, and she probably found it on someone else’s blog. I don’t care! since I covered old ground on red meat, I needed to find another artist worth a mention. i’ve seen hugh macleod’s gaping void comics in the back pages of jest, a (formerly) free (now $3.95) and very funny nyc-area humor mag, if memory serves. his site says he has a day gig at a top-end savile row tailor, and one of the nuggets of advice he offers in how to be creative is to keep the day job and make your masterpiece after you wash the dishes. he’s cynical, but there’s gold here. in a way, his art is less interesting than his ideas about it, which makes him a modern artist indeed.

There are so many good, pithy quotes here that the whole essay is close to being one long, pithy quote. if david mamet and quentin tarantino write a career-advice pamphlet, it’s going to end up a lot like this:

“THE SEX & CASH THEORY: “The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended.”
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There’s no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.
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Recently I heard Chris Ware, currently one of the top 2 or 3 most critically acclaimed cartoonists on the planet, describe his profession as “unrewarding”.
When the guy at the top of the ladder you’re climbing describes the view from the top as “unrewarding”, be concerned. Heh.”

They should tell you this stuff in grade school, methinks. save a lot of misery.