This program is sponsored by the Kavli Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Kavli Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity. I'm Alan Olga and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

I interviewed novelists and poets and

Sculptors and painters and architects and joke writers on a television show and

Sandcastle builders and food makers but fundamentally artists the way we think about artists and try to understand their path from

passing notion to finished work with all the torture in between and what was interesting to me of course is that very few people think about the way they create

They're superstitious about it they fear trying to understand it too much because they think that the magic will somehow disappear and they'll be unable to do that.

And I had these 40 plus, 43 conversations about how something comes from nothing.

That's Adam Moss.

After a successful career as an award-winning magazine editor,

he decided to put it all aside to pursue a passion for painting. He became pretty good at it, but he felt

something was missing, and his struggle to understand what that something was, led to

his new book, The Work of Art.

You've written a really interesting book about the creative process,

and it comes from such a personal place that's so enticing as an

acclaimed prize-winning magazine editor. You leave your job and you commit to

being a painter. That's right. And you weren't satisfied. Why weren't you satisfied with your painting?

Well, because I was a terrible painter.

But you were obsessed with it nevertheless.

I was I was so you know I had a career working in a group as an editor does and

finding it enormously creatively satisfying.

But I had this, you know, yin

...