From reading his story and looking at his artwork, it seems to me that he went off into a feedback loop of making and appreciating a very specific kind of art, which requires a certain mindset from the viewer. It's a danger to anyone who's trying to express themselves as fully as possible. With enough time, you can teach your mind to find depths of meaning in anything at all, so it's sometimes useful to trust other people's first reactions over your own highly evolved (warped) perspective.