How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #10, Zettel 156

…serious artists tend to develop a kind of creative mechanism - a conceptual approach - that allows them to be led by new ideas and surprise themselves without deviating from their own artistic principles. As an artist, you’re always studying your environment, absorbing sensations, memories of how things work and don’t. The goal is to create a practice that allows a constant recalibration between your imagination and the world around you.