When artists suffer, they do not become more creative. They become at their very core, human. Suffering is a painfully human experience we like to disregard as the sole bane of our existence. When we try to avoid it instead of empathizing the cause of our pains, we become less human. We are running away from ourselves. A great artist must essentially be stripped of all that prevents him from his vulnerability, his weaknesses and his humanity. Embrace all that he is. That, I think, is ever the only way to create good art. Because art that defeats time is art that happened and most importantly art that fought to live in each one of us.
Pretty corny but my epiphanies have nowhere to go. This is how I see the tortured artist myth which some people are painfully glamorizing nowadays.