Because painting:

is a game.

is the application (consciously or otherwise) of the rules of composition.

is the freezing of movement.

is the representation (or interpretation or appropriation or disputation or presentation) of objects.

is the springboard for the imagination.

is spiritual illustration.

is justification.

serves an end.

Because to paint is to give aesthetic value to flowers, women, eroticism, the daily environment, art, Dadaism, psychoanalysis and the war in Vietnam.

We are not painters.

-Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, Niele Toroni, 1969

BMPT had the right idea: Beauty is politics and beauty is a sedative.