Why are you still painting?

Photographer David Friedman put together a short documentary on the ‘father’ of the video game, Ralph Baer. His wife died to in 2006, but he continues to tinker and invent is his home laboratory. “What else am I going to do? I need a challenge.”, he says. I love how he’s an engineer by trade, but sees himself as an artist:

I still get a big charge out of making something work. I write the hardware, I push the button, I download it into the microprocessor… and it works. Ahhh, beautiful!

I’m basically an artist, no different from a painter that sits there and loves what he does.

Would you ask a guy who’s been painting his whole life why you’re still painting, why don’t you retire? Retire to what?! Stop painting? This is insane.

via The Atlantic