Naga

Naga, Facebook Graffiti

TEDTalks: Clifford Stoll

When I grow up, I want to be like you.

Desire

To some extent, artists pose the order of sensuousness against the order of reason. That itself [...] is enough to link the experience with childlike qualities and to make us regard it as play. Society in general tends to excuse the artist’s pursuit of pleasure because the result, the drawing or painting or sculpture, is thought to be unreal. So we allow artistic vision as play.

But as play, it is serious business. Drawing is an act of self-control. It is also a form of personal growth, part of which is understanding desire and weaving it, in its varied forms, felicitously and usefully into the fabric of one’s own life.

--Peter Steinhart, "The Undressed Art: Why We Draw", p.198 (Vintage 2004)