My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I'm conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.
I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.
I am the eye that beholds... And I am the dreamer that paints the stars in the night sky... For I am the one they call artist, and you call Love.
I've met a lot of artists who wanted to paint me. LeRoy Neiman was one. He did it from a photograph. He made 20,000 copies, and we sold them all.
It must be said that it is challenging to balance uncompromising artistic integrity with commercial requirements, but I've also come to learn that couture clients are adventurous and particularly unpredictable in their taste.
The desk thing is a problem for me. The ideal one would be vast and perfectly clear. Yet the bane of the biographical existence is paper; if you're 'an artist under oath' you're writing from a mountain of documentation.
I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.
When I've worked with established artists, I've naturally been more restricted, but you still have to take risks and push yourself to do something different.
Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.
Awakening your spiritual side is really what artists do. When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world.
I think, as an artist, part of your job is being aware of what's going on around you and not selling out and not following the trend, which I'm totally against.
Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.
Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness, and your black presence.
I'm six foot four and a half and I have a temper. It's reserved for very important issues. If someone is asking me to make an artistic concession, then I'll become a madman.
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.
People weren't even aware that I wrote my own songs. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist.
You have to write badly to write at all. If it's crappy, I will rewrite it later. But it will be mine. You can hear the resonance of an artist who goes into herself.
Every artist says that he/she wants to do something challenging, and I'm not any different. If someone approaches me with a serious role, I'll be more than happy.
I'm always in awe of people who are artists in their fields - people who understand that simply by taking ideas and translating them into reality, they've created value in the world.
I'm a guy desperately in need of buffers. I have big feelings, big reactions, big emotions. All the things that serve me as an artist, but challenge me as a socially-responsible human being.
The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.
