Even if the world outside is destroying itself and fragmented and paranoid and fearful, the job of the artist is to embrace and hold people and say, ‘It’s OK, be safe here.’
I would hardly call myself an artist in that sense; I doodle, I draw, I’m not a trained artist, I couldn’t sit down and do an accurate portrait of anyone.
The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don’t look at myself as a visual artist. I make music.
That’s how a lot of Tame Impala songs start out – as ideas for songs I could potentially give to someone else. I think of them with a different persona in mind; it’s just a subconscious way of not being bound by what you think you are as an artist.
Artists have really never had any representation on Capitol Hill, because it’s not the nature of the artist to join together and make a unified presence. Those days kind of died in the ’60s.
I was more than just a moody artist.
I think older people can appreciate my music because I really show my heart when I sing, and it’s not corny. I think I can grow as an artist, and my fans will grow with me.
I’d say, if you want to be an artist, start with your art; start with making great music and it will, hopefully, eventually cut through all of the nonsense that is out there.
I get paid all day, every day, which is almost too much for a sensitive artist.
I did get a reputation for being choosy and not very easy to be approached, and none of that is true. It is not that I am not approachable, it is just that I am trying to find myself and establish who I am as an artist.
Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter’, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‘the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.’ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‘Artist.’
As an artist, the most important thing and the most special thing is when your intention shines through on the work.
Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That’s an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.
Why do you think my name is Artist? I’m an artist.
No one can make the album they made 10 years ago with a straight face. There are two reasons: one is you change as a person. To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way. And the second thing is these are different times.
I am an artist who works with Lego.
In French, there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist’s touch, his personal style, his ‘paw’. I wanted to get away from la patte and from all that retinal painting.
I hope what I do has an art to it, and as an artist you have to try new things and keep yourself entertained.
As an artist, I gotta stand up to my own work.
There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
Bruce Lee only played himself. Chuck Norris is a martial artist that does acting. I want to be an actor that does martial arts.
If I have an opportunity to do something safe or something challenging, I’ll often choose the latter. Sometimes, the objective is to submerge my viewpoint with the artist.
In my previous life, I was an artist. I still paint. I love art.
I always knew that I wanted to be an artist.
A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant – rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance – but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.
I don’t think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player – he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I’m an artist who happens to be Latin.
If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.
I went to film school at UT Austin. I learned a lot, and that school’s good for puking up all your bad movies early and quick. But ultimately, no one can teach you to be an artist.
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.
If you live through the initial stage of fame and get past it, and remember thats not who you are. If you live past that, then you have a hope of maybe learning how to spell the word artist.
To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.
My fan base is really expanding into an inter-generational thing – it’s what every artist probably hopes for.
My theory is the root of a country artist is truth and honesty. For me, I look at Sam Hunt. The truth and the honest thing is we have southern roots, we were raised in a southern way, but we listen to Drake and other stuff, too.
I feel like every piece of art is a mirror of what’s going on in the present time, because the artist – a painter, a sculptor, a filmmaker – will be affected by what’s around them, so it seeps into their work.
The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.
I’ve sort of decided that I can settle for being just the artist, arranger, writer and part-time engineer. That seems like enough to do.
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another… and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I’ve always called myself an illustrator. I’m not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.
I think ‘The Color of Money’ was very instrumental in opening up other opportunities. People started to recognize me as an artist after that film. And then, after I did ‘Bird,’ it was more solidified.
The artist sees the tragic to such a degree that he is compelled to express the non-tragic.
The world doesn’t need an artist who shows reality as it is.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
My favorite singer is Canton Jones, a gospel hip-hop artist – when I’m on the bus going to a game, I listen to him in my own little world, singing and dancing; he gets me ready to play every time.
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
I’ve had to accept that – that everyone cannot love me. Because when there’s love, there’s hate. When there’s light, there’s dark. But it was really hard to accept as an artist that there’s a lot of people that hate me, but on the other side, there are many more people who love me. I think everyone goes through that.
Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people – the beauty within themselves.
As an artist, I often wonder what my purpose is or why I do what I do.
I just respect Kanye as an artist.
I never claimed to be a generic artist, period. I never wanted to be a generic artist.
My first artist bus was Jason Aldean’s old bus, with deer antlers over the lights and cowhide on the back of the couches. It was such an absolute dude bus.
If I could collaborate with any artist, I would want it to be like Marvin Gaye. Someone like who they wouldn’t expect me to do a feature with, like, very iconic.
The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.
We don’t sign an artist to fill a void, ever. I’ll never find a Taylor Swift. You can’t find a new Madonna, you cannot find a Prince, a Bob Marley, a John Lennon. You won’t find another Kanye West. We simply deal with people as they walk in, and we say we either love them or we don’t.
