[A] real artist is conscious of having a personal singularity that is partly a blessing and partly a curse. An artist enjoys and suffers from isolation. As solitude, isolation can nurture. It can also destroy.
— Peter Schjeldahl, “Why Artists Make the Worst Students,” originally in Chronicle of Higher Education.
I can’t say I agree with everything asserted in the speech I’ve excerpted here. And I wasn’t thinking of Peter Schjeldahl when I closed my studio door one winter day in my final semester of graduate school.
