There's a lot said and written about art and insanity, and how they're frequently found together. If they are, in fact. But there's not much attention devoted to the connection between art and hard work.
Very little talk about the unceasing, sweaty, dirty, toil of artists. How they often work to their final breath. Doing unrewarded grunt labor. And for no evident reason. As far as the world knows.
This doggedness, this obsessive, unrelenting, single-mindedness, is often viewed as actually crazy. And maybe one of the chief reasons artists are regarded as lunatics.
On his death bed, at nearly 90, Michelangelo, the greatest artist who ever lived, had to have his ragged boots peeled away from his feet. They were fused to his skin. And he wasn't even poor. Just too engaged with his sculpting. You might say joyfully, madly, engaged.