The Greeks said the artist doesn't actually have to travel and look around. You stay where God has put you, and you dig as deep as you can. This is what I've done.
The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it.
My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore.
Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
I don't tend to offer up a critique unless I have a clearly formulated alternative, because there's nothing worse than people on a set or any kind of artistic life who critique something but who don't have anything to offer.
I think I was very lucky to have grown up with an artist's studio in the house. It was a kind of life that was possible. Yeah, it made it kind of harder because the standards were higher, but there was no pressure.
I think that people that are not sensitive, who seem to bang through life, do survive, but I don't think they get the really soaring feelings that people who are more artistically bent can get.
The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.
Reggae was always a passion of mine. I used to say in interviews that I would love to do a reggae album. But it consumed my life being a hip-hop artist and being Heavy D, which I'm happy and proud of.
Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.
My life is at least as intricate as my readers' lives. People say that 'The Artist's Way' changed their lives, but when they talk about 'Floor Sample,' they tell me, 'I was with you all the way.'
I worked selling tickets for Dodger Stadium; I delivered pizza; I did every job under the sun. It's the part that sucks as an artist. But I've learned at the end of the day you just have to enjoy your life.
Sometimes I read a biography of some tempestuous artist and find myself longing for fireworks! booze! bloody fights!; I do think that life must be so much more thrilling when you're actively miserable.
Music is my number one, it's my life, it's my everything. I'm enjoying challenging myself; I want to raise the bar and set a new standard for Australian pop artists.
I guess I had a suspicion of it my entire life without knowing exactly what it was - knowing that there was something different about me, which I attributed to being an artist. At 11 or 12 I started sort of clarifying for myself. It took a while.
I would love to do Broadway the rest of my life! Because it's challenging, because it makes me grow as an actor, as an entertainer, as an artist, and that's what I need; that's what I'm hooked on.
In the time it takes American literary titan William H. Gass to write a novel, other artists have been born, completed their life's work and died. That may be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.
You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it; as an artist, you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material, and that's a creepy thing to do.
I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.
I'm excited about there being more of a sisterhood these days. Back in the '90s there was a lot of hate - the women I looked up to as artists were dissing me! It's not so patriarchal these days - there's more love and a lot less hate!
A common sense of humour and a love of music is really important, as I love all types of music. You name me any genre, and I can give you a list of artists I adore.
