"Studio work is an ascetic practice. It demands that the artist places limits on his or her freedom to do anything, in order to do something. The artist must develop ascetic disciplines in order to avoid one of the worst of aesthetic vices: self-indulgence. Artistic freedom can—and usually does—lead easily to an inflated sense of her own will which yearns to be “expressed.” This is often the approach of most undergraduate art students, who are often practicing art as a means to celebrate their creativity, their freedom, their emotions—in short, their will. And they acquire various techniques, whether drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramic, photography, or video as merely “tools” in the service of their individuality. This approach leads to immature, facile, decorative, imprecise, and doughy work, which merely “illustrates” some vague idea or feeling. And, quite frankly, there are few things as uninteresting as a twenty-year-old’s individuality….we (both believers and unbelievers) often forget that the core of the Christian life is ascetic. We are called “to deny ourselves and take up our cross” and follow Jesus. We must impose limits to our freedom. Our salvation depends upon it. But the Christian life is also aesthetic, in that the goal of the ascetic disciplines—of fasting, prayer, contemplation, and study, for example—become means to mold and shape the person into a beautiful work of art, pleasing to God. (That the aesthetic is presumed to be a product of self-indulgence and not self-denial is one of the truly tragic errors of a decadent modernity to which both Christians and non-Christians must confess guilt.)
Modern studio practice is a place where the monastic tradition and its call for self-denial can be revived and a renewed understanding of the relationship between aesthetic and ascetic practice reaffirmed for the very practice of human life."

(a long quote from Dan Seidell) (via kathkath)