"An intelligible picture of the world"

First, a quote from Thomas Nagel:

A creative individual externalizes the best part of himself, producing with incredible effort something better than he is, which can then float free of its creator and have a finer existence of its own.

...and then from Albert Einstein:

(...) one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought (...) Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it.

Simple escapism is a very important desire behind the creative impulse. One of the most powerful drives behind great works of science and art is distaste towards the world or one's very own self.